


The Devil's Due

by kitsunealyc



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Crow - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Crossover, Expect Crow levels of vengeance/violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Limited tagging to prevent spoilers, Multi, This is a Crow story in an HP setting, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-06-07 19:44:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6821560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunealyc/pseuds/kitsunealyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after Voldemort's victory and the Fall of Harry Potter, an angry revenant rises from the grave to wreak bloody vengeance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s notes:
> 
> Many thanks to Selenya, who helped me conceive this bunny. On the night before her wedding, no less. Let’s hear it for dedicated Goff Grrls!
> 
> Revised Notes:  
> I started and abandoned this fic just after HBP came out and before we even had a title for DH. For a long time I left it unfinished because the release of DH made it AU. However, I was very happy I’d guessed correctly on a few major plot points (like Harry being the final Horcrux and needing to die so that Voldemort could be killed, and all the Snape/Lily stuff). 
> 
> I decided recently to give this fic a major overhaul and finish it, so you are looking at the all-revised, new and improved version. The fic is complete at 40k, and I’ll be posting updates on my usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
> 
> This goes AU at the final Battle of Hogwarts in Deathly Hallows, for reasons that will quickly become obvious. Also. It’s dark. Like, really dark.

October 29, 11:30pm

The fête was an elegant affair, as befitted the Georgian ballroom of Nott’s recently acquired Grosvenor Square townhouse. Cool, green-tinted orbs of witchlight hung in the massive crystal chandelier in the place of candles, deepening the green of the velvet drapes and the black of formal wizarding robes. The conversations between the guests rose and fell in ripples like the dark surface waters of a loch, obscuring the cold depths of manipulation and machination that played out underneath. The low thrum of a cello from the musician’s gallery threaded through the murmur, with the high-voiced whimpers of the muggles and muggleborn pinned along the walls like bugs on display taking the place of violins—the grotesque display an artistic counterpoint to the studied elegance of the guests.

Severus Snape was bored.

He’d expected—and experienced—many states under the Dark Lord’s reign these past six months: terror, paranoia, rage, helplessness. Boredom, though. That was something new. He followed the flow of guests as they circled the room to admire the displays of torture that Nott had worked so hard to create, giving the feeling of boredom a mental nudge. Perhaps it would spark some deeper emotion, some thought that would lead to a plan that would lead to action that would lead to the Dark Lord’s defeat or, at the very least, Snape’s final and thoroughly earned reward. But it was boredom, as dense and dull as a Fifth Year after the O.W.L.s, so no spark came of it.

 _You’re not bored, you’re numb,_  Snape thought, stopping before another display as though admiring it: a naked, paunchy man of middling years, suspended securely with a modified Levicorpus. Nott had spelled a set of bluebell flames underneath the man. He whimpered, sweat and tears mixing, as he slowly cooked to death. And Snape couldn’t bring himself to care. Caring was the enemy. Caring only led to failure and despair.

Even so, Snape found himself slipping from the crowd, seeking the cool shadows underneath the musicians’ gallery, where he was unlikely to be disturbed—or noticed.

 _Another night, another murderous debauchery,_  he thought. Gallows humor, though wizards preferred spells to nooses when dishing death, as illustrated by Nott’s creative exhibition. It was meant to be a celebration of the Dark Lord’s rule, organized in gratitude for his munificence—the paunchy muggle baking over bluebells was the townhouse’s previous owner. The townhouse an acknowledgment of the time Nott spent in Azkaban after the Hall of Prophecies debacle.

And yet... Snape surveyed the room, the not-so-idly conversing guests. He wasn’t the only one too preoccupied to react to the casual cruelty on display, no matter how inventive it might be. Less than six months since Voldemort’s victory and the final defeat of Harry Potter, and the Death Eaters’ revels had turned into the homicidal equivalent of Tupperware parties. What did it matter to torture and kill a few Muggles, or even a Mudblood, if you were encouraged to do it all the time, and rather doubted that there would be any repercussions? The Ministry was a shambles, the Order disbanded, and its few remaining members disheartened and on the run. Most of the Aurors, with the pragmatism that people in such professions came to possess, had joined with Voldemort and were now responsible for tracking down the remaining resistance and any other sympathizers.

This should have been when Voldemort’s support structure began to topple. With the external threat removed, internal strife and power grabs should have quickly demolished any loyalties formed in the face of the opposition. But Voldemort was too canny to let things fall to such a state. Gone were the promises of power—a sure way to give underlings notions. Voldemort ruled through fear and pain that could only be suspended through increasingly extreme demonstrations of loyalty. The conversations among tonight’s guests weren’t about the dying muggles on display. They were tests. Traps. Everyone poking for a weakness in their fellows. Did this person look a little green? A little too sympathetic? Did that person look a little too covetous of Nott’s reward? Did the other person not praise the Dark Lord enthusiastically enough? Reporting dissent and unrest was the easiest way to survive under the Dark Lord’s reign. The external enemy had been exchanged for an internal enemy. The Death Eaters were too busy turning on each other to unite against Voldemort.

Which meant it was as dangerous for Snape to be hiding in the shadows as it would have been for him to avoid the fête, no matter how desperately he might have wished to.

But he couldn’t stay. He needed... air. He slipped out of the ballroom and through a gallery that Nott had laid out with more plebian implements of torment for his guests’ use. Implements... and innocents.

The screams and pleas of one of Nott’s party treats, a muggleborn Hufflepuff whose name Snape couldn’t—didn't want to—remember, disrupted his thoughts. He sought refuge in the boredom, the numbness, when the child recognized him and began pleading with Professor Snape to please make it stop, please, she’d be good, she’d do all her Potions homework, please, and three feet of extra credit, and he could take all the House points he wanted, and please, just make it….

The two Death Eaters torturing the girl seemed to find her pleas—and Snape’s disregard of them—vastly amusing.

“Oi, Snape, this one wants it from you bad.”

“Aye,” his friend agreed, catching on to the game. “You want ta have a go at ‘er?”

Snape stopped. Took a moment to gather disdain around him like a palpable presence. These two were fence sitters who had only joined the cause after The Fall. If they had any wits, they would fear a long-term supporter like himself.

He favored them with a sneer. “And what makes you think I have any interest in picking at your leavings? I am not some dog at your table. I am one of His Lordship’s most valued supporters. I am the man who killed Albus Dumbledore.” A year-and-a-half gone, and he could almost say it now without wanting to vomit. His tone lowered to a whisper. “Best you remember that before I bother to learn your names so that I may drop them in His Lordship’s ear.”

He surveyed the terrified looks on the men’s faces, smiling grimly. It would seem that the feared Potions Master had not lost his touch. The Death Eaters were as cowed as any First-Year.

He flicked a hand as though brushing away lint. “Now, get out of my sight. And leave your trash. I’ll clean it up for you, since I don’t trust you idiots to do it properly.”

In moments, the two men had scurried off, leaving Snape with a sobbing, bleeding Hufflepuff.

“Get up.” He released her restraints and dragged her away by her upper arm before someone ventured into the gallery and saw him with his prize. He led her through dim servants’ corridors, muffling her sobs with a quick Silencio when she wouldn’t shut up.

It was not until they had left the Grosvenor Square mansion and traveled several streets away to a narrow, dirty alleyway that Snape released the silencing charm. The girl—the name Puddleswop… Matilda… Tilly sprang unbidden to his mind—gazed up at him with surprise and fear.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please, Professor Snape… don’t—”

“I have no intention of doing anything to you, Miss Puddleswop,” he droned, feeling the weight of his years and of all the questionable things he had done to get to this point. “Except to tell you that it is no longer safe for you to stay in Britain.” Spying an old tin can resting in the alley gutter, he drew his wand and cast a muttered Portus.

“That Portkey will take you somewhere safe. Do you have any family left?” His gut clenched when she bit her lip and shook her head. “No matter. There are people at the other end who will help you.”

“Th—thank—”

“Save your gratitude, Miss Puddleswop.” He fixed her with his gaze, hoping the seriousness of his demeanor would drive what he was about to say past her fear and into her memory. “Leave. Don’t come back here. To Britain. Ever. It is not safe. And do not tell anyone that I helped you, not even those I’m sending you to, or I may not be able to help anyone else. Do you understand?” At her dumb nod, he backed away, always the forbidding Potions Master.

“Go.”

Tilly Puddleswop hesitated a moment before her hand tentatively reached out to the Portkey he had just created. He could tell from her expression that she half-believed this to be some cruel trick. He remained motionless. As she whipped out of existence, he saw her lips form a soft ‘thank you’.

After the tin can had whisked her away, he cast a dozen minor curses on the alleyway trash, just in case anyone wondered at her disappearance and checked his wand with a Priori Incantatem.

This was what he was reduced to.

All the years of spying, all the sacrifices he’d made, all the horrors he stomached so that he could remain useful. He had killed his friend and mentor, the only man he ever trusted, the only one who ever trusted him, so that he might be in place for the endgame; so that Harry Potter might have the chance to do the impossible; so that Voldemort might be stopped. Snape had done everything he was supposed to do. He’d anonymously passed information. He’d ensured the Dark Lord was relatively unguarded and weakened through subtle potions… and overconfident, unprepared, impetuous Harry Bloody Potter had still failed—had died at Voldemort’s hand with a look of surprise in his young green eyes.

Now Snape was all that was left. The Weasleys, icons as they were for the resistance, were all dead within days of Potter. He didn’t know what had happened to Granger, but she would not have survived long. Malfoy-the-younger, who had decided that night on the Astronomy Tower that he wasn’t a killer and ended up aiding Snape, had only lasted a few weeks past The Fall. He’d refused an order to kill one of his classmates, a Ravenclaw… Chang? Voldemort forced him to do so under Imperius and then Crucio’d him for his hesitation.

Snape found Draco a few hours later, self-inflicted cuts along his forearms so deep and long that they’d obliterated the Dark Mark. Snape still wasn’t certain if he despised the boy for his cowardice or admired him for his pragmatism. After all, discovery and death were inevitable. It was only a matter of time until Snape found himself facing a similar decision.

Tonks, Lupin, and Shacklebolt headed the gasping remnants of the Order. Tonks could look like anyone, a useful survival skill, that. Lupin was resilient as only a werewolf could be, and Shacklebolt… well, Shacklebolt was, to use a Muggle phrase, a ‘bad-ass motherfucker’. Snape was fairly certain that, of anyone, Shacklebolt would survive to the bitter end. But so many others had fallen that it was hardly worth considering those who still stood. They weren’t enough to take down Voldemort.

And none of them trusted Snape. They only knew him as the traitor who had betrayed Dumbledore and stood at Voldemort’s side. The memories that might exonerate Snape, Dumbledore’s memories of all their planning, carefully stored in a Pensieve, were destroyed the night Potter died. Snape had done it himself, watching those silvery strands mingle and wash away into the murky waters of the Thames. Better to be thought a traitor by the Order, Snape had believed, than to be discovered a traitor by Voldemort. At least this way he could still do some good.

Good. He snorted. At most he saved one, maybe two a night without being discovered. And he wondered for the thousandth time why he even tried—what the point was. He wondered if Draco’s pragmatic solution might not be the best one.

A nearby church bell sounded the hour, pulling Snape out of his dour musings. Midnight. It was now technically October 30th. Devil’s Night was upon them, and bloodbaths would rule for the next three days to celebrate the rise, fall, and triumphant return of the Dark Lord.

 _Why bother? The Devil rules every night,_  Snape thought. Savagely kicking a bit of cursed trash out of his way, he stalked out of the alley and back towards Nott’s new abode.

 

***

 

Far to the west of London, on the outskirts of a sleepy village on the Devon coast named Godric’s Hollow, was a tiny, unassuming graveyard. It had the look of a family plot that had seen many generations of burials, but also a good deal of recent neglect. Yet, if anyone in that sleepy village had been asked about the graveyard, they would have denied any knowledge of it, or the family line that rested there, or the hasty and secret burial that had been held six months previous.

With the death of the last of the line, there was little call for anyone to remark on the Potter family plot.

The bare light of a sickle moon shone faintly between the branches of the trees surrounding the plot. Autumn-yellow leaves were rendered dull and grey by the darkened night. They skittered across the grounds and caught in the long, unkempt grasses. Most of the headstones were old, some crumbling, others bleached white with green runners of moss where rainwater had trickled and gathered. But there were three, huddled near the south fence, which looked relatively fresh. Two were sprouting a bit of lichen growth, while the furthest one, the smallest one, still had the scoured-clean look of a new gravestone.

The branches rustled as the wind picked up. More leaves blew free. In the distant village, the church clock sounded midnight, and a flurry of motion exploded into the graveyard as a large black crow flapped down and landed on one of the newest stones. Its eyes caught the scant moonlight, gleaming like onyx, and it began pecking at the stone. The clack of its hard beak and the harshness of its intermittent caws broke the quiet of the night. The wind grew stronger, and the meager light dimmed as racing clouds crossed over the sickle moon. The crow’s feathers lost all sheen, making it a shadow against grey stone. Drops of rain spattered the stone, the leaves and long grasses. Thunder rumbled lowly in the distance, and the crow continued cawing and pecking, the intensifying rainfall lending an odd urgency and purpose to its actions.

Lightning flashed, followed close on by a crack of thunder, and the crow cawed in counterpoint. The skies broke; the rain came in torrential sheets, the branches overhead whipping in the wind. Soil erupted at the base of the gravestone. Flapping its wings, the crow fluttered up in a frenzy of cawing. A pale shape worked its way out of the disturbed grass and dirt—a hand—then another pushed out, both fumbling frantically at the ground, pushing away the dirt that was quickly becoming mud. Arms emerged, then a head, eyes clenched against the mud, mouth open on a desperate gasp, the first breath of the newly born.

Shoving dirt, grass, and leaves to one side, the mud-covered revenant pulled itself from the grave, collapsing onto the ground in an exhausted, trembling heap. Rain sheeted down, washing away the worst of the mud, leaving the revenant pale and shivering, covered in tatters that might once have been clothes. The crow cawed, and the revenant doubled in pain as memories, too harsh, too bright, too painful for all that they were disjointed, flooded back.

Friends, love, betrayal, death, battle, sacrifice, the green fire of the Avada Kedavra, and then nothing. And then… a pecking, a raucous caw, a summons. Things left undone, deaths that needed avenging, an evil that must be destroyed. And close on that, more pain, the press of earth, the cold wash of rain… and… the memories.

A tortured scream rent the air above Godric’s Hollow, but in the raging storm, nobody heard.


	2. The Crow Descends

False dawn teased the edge of night when Snape finally returned to number 12 Grimmauld Place. On Potter’s death—the boy hadn’t even had the foresight to leave a will—ownership had reverted to Draco, Narcissa’s son and the only surviving male descendant of the House of Black. In true Slytherin style, Snape and Malfoy had ensured that the house would remain undetected by Voldemort, and therefore a haven for those who fought against him. When Malfoy took his own life, Snape was not surprised to find that he was now the owner of the unplottable house. He would have been amused by the irony of himself owning Sirius’ house if he hadn’t been disgusted by the string of compounded mistakes that had led to it.

Dragging himself up the stairs, Snape entered the bathroom, turned the shower taps, and stripped. He hardly flinched as he stepped under the scalding water… just bowed his head and let it wash the horror and the memories away.

He’d managed to save another before leaving the fête: A wizard around his age and a supporter of the resistance. After Snape got him out, on the way to another distant alley and charmed another Portkey, the man had fumed about how Snape had betrayed them all. His words still cut at Snape’s soul:

_“This doesn’t change what you are. Traitor. From the moment you got James and Lily killed to the moment you murdered Albus Dumbledore, that’s all you’ve ever been. And why? Because James was **mean** to you in school? What did Lily do to deserve your betrayal? She was only ever nice to you! And Harry, What did Harry do? He was only a boy! And now you think that saving a few lives makes up for it? You want an Order of Merlin for an act of basic decency? Slytherin slime—”_

Snape had barely controlled his fury. He Obliviated the man rather than performing the more dire curses he so desperately wanted to perform. It had been an ugly scene, at least in part because Snape wondered to what extent the man’s accusations were true.

Oh, yes. He hated James. Always had. More than he hated Sirius, when it came down to it. Because at the end of it all, Sirius had just been a petty tormenter, but James had been….

Snape sucked in a mouth of spray and spat it out.

He’d resisted joining Voldemort and his Death Eaters for so long. He wasn’t an idiot, and even then he knew that no matter if Voldemort’s side won, it was ultimately the losing side for a half-blood like himself. But his seventh year at Hogwarts saw any hope of happiness dashed, and hadn’t power always been his refuge when happiness was denied? It was the irony of all ironies that the secret that finally brought him to Voldemort’s attention also brought Lily to his attention.

Snape turned his face to the spray, washing away any trace of tears that may or may not have been there.

He hated James, true. But he never meant to hurt Lily. He’d only wanted….

Seventeen years ago, Lily Potter had died. Because of him. The night that he learned she was slated for death, the night he signed her death warrant by revealing that bloody prophesy to Voldemort, was the night he went to Dumbledore and told him everything, swore an oath, began his penance. But it hadn’t been enough.

It had been easy for so long. Voldemort had been defeated by the Boy-Who-Lived. Many of his Death Eaters were captured, although many others remained free. But then Harry Potter came to Hogwarts and Snape had to look at Lily’s eyes in James’ face every day. It was almost more than he could bear. Then Voldemort returned, and Snape had to turn spy, pretending loyalty to the monster who’d killed Lily. And as much as Snape hated Harry because Lily chose to die for him, Snape had to protect the boy, to prepare him for the battles to come because… well… Lily chose to die for him.

She’d only ever been nice to him. From the moment he revealed himself to her, she'd been nice to him. Even once she'd broken through and become popular with her classmates, she was nice to him. He met her with the surly responses of a homely, bookish boy who didn’t understand why a pretty, popular girl would continue to be nice to him, until that one, awful moment when he’d given her reason to hate him.

She of the green eyes and red hair and inquisitive, heart-shaped face had been nice to him, and he’d loved her for it even after he made her hate him. He’d hated James all the more when Lily. But he hadn’t meant to betray her. He hadn’t meant to fail her son.

That was the point. That was why the fight mattered, and why Draco’s pragmatic option wasn’t an option at all. Snape couldn’t betray her again, even if it meant playing the bloody hero in a fight that was already lost.

Severus Snape shut off the water and stood dripping in the steaming shower, lank, wet hair falling around his face, normally pale skin red from the scalding.

***

False dawn found the pale, dripping revenant creeping towards an old Quidditch shed near an abandoned house. Misting rain still drizzled from patchy clouds, though the moon had long set. Ahead, a large black crow alighted on the shed’s roof, cawing once before canting its head to one side and regarding the revenant steadily. The lock on the shed was rusty; the damp wood around it was rotted and ridden with insects. When the revenant tugged on the handle, the fasteners and wood crumbled. The door listed open with a creak. Inside were the hoops, markers and other paraphernalia for a pick-up game of Quidditch, including the crate that held the Quaffle, Bludgers, and the Snitch. Everything was covered with a layer of dust and cobwebs, turned to mud in places where the roof of the shed leaked.

In the corner, protected from the worst of the weather, stood the brooms. The revenant reached a clammy-pale arm towards them, lean fingers grasping the smooth, polished handle of the nicest. Even with the dust, the wood gleamed softly, the script _Firebolt_ in mellow gold scrolled up the handle. The revenant pulled it out, hand stroking lovingly down the length. Flashes of memory flooded up from that touch: A grand pitch, banners of red and gold, black and green, cheers and shouts and jeers and boos, a rider on a broom, long face capped by messy black hair, a flitter of gold…

The revenant shook, face crumpled in pain; the broom clattered to the floor. Calling on the memories was too difficult, too agonizing yet. The crow cawed, and the revenant straightened slightly, breathing heavily. Another caw sounded from outside, and the revenant bent to retrieve the broom, hand hesitating with a slight tremble before it wrapped around the wooden handle. The memories stayed mercifully quiescent. The revenant moved back into the rain, broom in one hand.

The crow perched on the lintel of the abandoned house, regarding the revenant with a strangely patient urgency. _If you’re done here…_ it seemed to be saying.

The revenant nodded, calling the broom to life with a ragged-voiced, “Up.”

The crow launched itself into the air as the revenant on the broom swept aloft, both becoming diminishing dark blots as they headed east and north. Behind them, the abandoned house sat forlornly, windows broken, door hanging open, the rain beading on a sign above the lintel that read _The Burrow_.

***

With his skin scoured as clean as his sins would allow, and his most painful memories Pensieved so that he might glean a few hours of sleep free of nightmares, Snape still found himself prowling the house, setting a chair to rights, dusting off a curio. Dawn was most likely threatening in the east, but sometime during the past hour a deadening rain had moved in from the Irish Sea.

_Weather_ , Snape thought as he picked up his Death Eater’s cloak and mask from the floor of the front hall, where he had shucked them in disgusted haste an hour earlier. As changeable as it was, it did make a good topic to fixate upon when all others seemed too dangerous. One could expound for hours on British weather and not exhaust the subject. He was brushing dust off his Death Eater’s cloak when a faint shuffling sound from the porch made him freeze.

It couldn’t be someone from the Order, yet no one else knew of the unplottable house; no one but a member of the Order could find it. But they wouldn’t come back here, would they? They’d abandoned this place after Snape’s betrayal, certain that the traitor would give up their whereabouts. Even Kreacher had gone and gotten himself killed in the final massacre at Hogwarts.

What would drive a member of the Order to seek out Grimmauld Place now? Were they simply Gryffindor enough to think the house would be left unwatched and unguarded a year and a half after Dumbledore’s death? Or perhaps, in an emergency, they might chance it anyways?

His thoughts were interrupted by a light scratching, as if a bird were scraping its talons against the wood of the door… or as if someone injured was there and couldn’t manage much else.

Muttering a curse, Snape strode to the spyhole near the door. It would be just his luck to have to tend to a wounded and self-righteous Order member this night. Peering through, he saw nothing but shadows at first. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, a shape emerged. It was leaning against the doorway, arms clutched around its middle as if wounded, shivering and wet in the rain.

Snape hesitated, and then a part of him—the part that Dumbledore had spent years poking at and nurturing—stirred. No matter how painful or inconvenient, Snape couldn’t just leave that person out there to die. He let the spyhole cover drop, pulled out his wand from the pocket of his night robes, and opened the door to 12 Grimmauld Place.

The slight figure stood drenched, hand clenched around a dripping Firebolt, head bowed. Then the head raised, and Snape found himself staring into vivid green eyes that he never thought to see again. His breath caught, and his wand clattered to the floor.

“Snape… Severus…” The name rasped out like an accusation and a plea together. One pale, mud-streaked arm lifted and reached out, trembling. “Cold… so cold.”

Half in shock, and against all better judgment because the Inferi still walked and served Voldemort, Snape led the soaked, trembling figure inside. As he snatched up his wand, a large crow fluttered to land on the porch railing, cawing loudly. Although he thought he had left superstition far behind with other childish things, he shut the door against such a bad omen. Taking a shuddering breath, he turned to face the person now dripping in the front hall.

In the marginally better light of the house, he could see more clearly, but still his mind refused to process the truth of what he saw. The slight, pale form was dressed in tatters of what Snape could only assume were burial clothes, not having been invited to that particular funeral. Again, he was arrested by those eyes that had haunted him for so long. Vivid emerald green, set in a heart-shaped, inquisitive face, and framed by hair that, when wet, turned the color of rubies… or blood.

“Lily?” he whispered, barely aware he’d spoken at all.

“Harry.” Her voice rasped as though it was painful to speak, as though even _being_ was painful for her. “Where is Harry, Severus? Where is my son?”


	3. Remembrance

_October 30, 6:00am_

 

A moment passed, perhaps two, while Snape stood dumbly staring into the eyes of a dead woman. It was only when she shivered particularly hard— _as if a goose is walking her grave_ , he thought—that he was shaken from his stunned immobility. He snatched the pile of black wool that he had discarded moments before and wrapped Lily the folds of his Death Eater’s cloak. She clutched the edges around her, and he was momentarily distracted by her fingers. They were mud-streaked, with dirt caked under and around her short fingernails. She noticed his distraction and gave a low, rasping chuckle.

“They lied. They don’t grow.” He looked up then, and haunted green eyes met his. “After death. Fingernails,” she clarified. “They lied. They don’t grow.”

“I—” He cleared his throat and backed away a pace. The intensity, the anguish of those eyes was too much to bear that close. “Lily, how… how did you get here?” It was so inane, so much less a question than all the ones he wanted to ask, but it was all that he could squeeze past the tightness in his throat.

“There was a broom. I flew.” She gestured vaguely towards the door. She, too, seemed to have backed up a space, deeper into herself. “From Godric’s Hollow. As the crow flies.” She chuckled roughly again.

“Lily—” he tried again, but she interrupted him with a shake of her head.

“Please, Severus. I can’t. Not yet. The… memories. Thinking is too hard. I just need….” Her face, her entire body clenched, then she straightened and he saw in those eyes the immovable determination that Voldemort must have seen when she faced him down all those years ago. “I need to know what happened to my son.”

So he told her. Standing in the front hall, staring into those green eyes that had haunted him for so long, he told her of Voldemort’s attack on the Potters’ hiding place, of Pettigrew’s betrayal and Black’s imprisonment, of James’ and her own death, of the Boy-Who-Lived because of Voldemort’s failed killing curse. He told her what little he knew of her son’s life with her sister and of his years at Hogwarts. He told her of Voldemort’s rise and Snape’s own role as double, triple, quadruple agent. He told her of Dumbledore’s death, of the destruction of the Horcruxes and the failed search for the final Horcrux, of her son’s impetuous attack, and of his inevitable death.

She stood quietly through his recitation. As his final, toneless words died out, she moved listlessly into the parlour and sank onto a settee.

“And now?”

Taking her cue, he sat across from her. “And now Voldemort controls all of wizarding Britain. Muggle-born and sympathizers have been hunted down or have fled. There’s some resistance on the Continent, but Britain is an island in more ways than one. Nobody can infiltrate well enough to stage an effective resistance, and it wouldn’t matter if they could. He holds his courts and his revels, and as long as the secret of the final Horcrux remains undiscovered, Voldemort is unstoppable.”

“And you stand at his left hand and do nothing… just as you did nothing when he killed Harry.”

Snape’s stomach dropped at the deadened accusation in her tone, but years of disguising his reactions as a spy served him well; not the ghost of a flinch crossed his features. They sat in charged silence, Snape doing all he could to not stare as she sunk deeper into thought. She was alive—moving, thinking, alive! How? No magic that he knew of could accomplish it. Even the Inferi were little more than reanimated drones. He was afraid to know the means and found he didn’t much care. Teenage yearnings that he thought were long quashed and dead were resurrected alongside her. Stupid, ridiculous, and yet he couldn’t entirely suppress that sputter of longing as he watched her hair dry from dripping blood into a familiar auburn fire.

A dark shape flapping past the window drew her from her reverie. “Who else?”

“What?” Her sudden question startled him as much as her renewed intensity.

“Who else is to blame? Who else stands at his side? Who else is responsible for his return and all the pain it brought? Who else is responsible for my son’s death?”

He struggled to find his voice amidst the pain and guilt that her implied accusation stirred. Who _else_ , she had demanded. “Nott and Avery. Crabbe and Goyle, Senior. The Lestranges, but particularly Bellatrix. Lucius Malfoy. Pettigrew, of course. Others rise and fall depending on the weather. Those remain.” He fell silent.

“And you. You remain.” She rose, black robes swirling around her pale legs, her burning eyes focused on something beyond him. He stared at his knotted hands and choked down an agreement as she moved past him to the front hall.

“What are you going to do? What do you want me to do?” he whispered, wanting this condemnation over with.

“Do?”

He turned and saw that she had picked up his discarded Death Eater’s mask and was running her fingers over it. She grinned at him then, and for the first time in a long time he felt more than numbed despair. He felt fear. “What are we going to do? Tonight, we’re going to a party.”

 

 

***

 

Lily had finally unnerved him, finally flapped the unflappable crow with that last statement. Or maybe it was the grin, or perhaps both. Severus had shown her to a room and flapped off somewhere else, muttering about finding her some proper clothes. But he took his staring dark eyes and his beak of a nose and his fluttering black robes with him, and that was what she needed. She closed the door, closed the drapes, close her mind against the persistence of crows: wanting her, needing her, calling her from her peace, revealing things too painful to comprehend.

He’d led her to one of the master suites. It had an attached bathroom that might once have been a modern amenity—some time before the turn of the century, complete with a claw-foot tub and shower, a free-standing washbasin, and a toilet with a ceiling tank. The suite was musty from long disuse, though it seemed at some point a Hippogriff had made its nest here.

Opening the huge wardrobe that dominated one wall of the room, Lily realized why no human had bedded down in this place since its former occupant’s death. These must have been Walburga Black’s rooms. The overwhelming smell of mothballs assaulted her from the folds of black wool, gabardine, satin, and velvet that filled the wardrobe. Clothes from the days before the boom of mass-manufacture, when wizards didn’t dress much differently than Muggles.

She pulled out one of the gowns, a walking ensemble with bustle and underskirt, all in black velvet. Memories full of hatred, unhappiness, and deep prejudice assaulted her. She heard a woman’s cutting voice, dripping with disdain, and a wild young boy’s rebellious response. Dropping the gown, she backed away. The foreign memories receded, and she found herself wondering if there were any happy memories embedded in the House of Black.

Her bare foot trod on a fluffy pinfeather, and she had her answer in the vision of a boy, achingly familiar save for the eyes that were hers instead of James’, soaring on a tide of feathers and magic in a moment of pure joy.

“No, no, nononono...” She kicked the feather away, clawing at her throat to keep down the screams that pressed up from her gut.

She tried to explore the rest of the room, to distract herself, but every object was a potential bomb, a flashpoint of painful memories and associations—things she didn’t want to think about, things she wanted to banish like the crows that waited outside the closed door. She ended up lying in the middle of the floor, staring at the ceiling. Her dirt-encrusted fingers absently stroked the Death Eater’s mask. Waiting. Waiting for night to fall.

She began to feel uncomfortable in her skin. The wool cloak scratched against it; the dirt dried to it. Mechanically, she rose to her feet and moved to the bathroom. The cloak became a pool of blackness on the floor, the mask a mocking grin at its center. Hot water, cold water, soap and scrub. Her body remembered the motions of how to do this—could do it without thought. Towel and dry and wipe the steam from the mirror to fix your—

Oh god.

She stared at her reflection, falling endlessly into the moment of realization of me/not me. The moment of recognizing that self inherently implied not-self, where incompleteness was comprehended. The first terrible moment of loss. James. Harry. Lily. They were all gone. The woman in the mirror was dead. She was a shade, a shadow. She was the reflection. Other.

Tentatively, Lily reached towards the dead woman in the reflection and was surprised when the woman copied her gesture, reaching out to her. Their fingers touched, and the cool glass was like water between them. She flattened her palm, but when she pushed, the woman pushed back with equal force, denying her the rejoining she so desperately desired. Things to do, things left incomplete. In the back of her mind, she heard the cawing of crows… no, No. NO!

Her fists smashed the mirror again and again; the reflected woman splintered into blood-smeared refractions, shards of reflected memories. Sobbing, Lily rested her forehead against the shattered mirror, a gut-deep roar of rage and sorrow tearing from her, ripping at the inside of her throat like ebony talons. Her hands dropped to rest in the basin, blood oozing from a dozen cuts, light winking at her from a dusting of glass shards. Her breathing slowed and her sobs subsided as she watched the cuts shrink away into smooth, unblemished skin. There hadn’t been any pain, only the memory of the pain that should have been. She was deadened to the pain. Deadened. Dead.

Gliding back into the bedroom, she lifted the discarded gown from the floor, wrapping herself in the black velvet embrace of a dark hatred that wasn’t hers. The memory of those emotions ebbed and lay quiescent, tamed for the moment. She discarded the underskirt, instead pulling on thick, black stockings she found deeper in the wardrobe and sturdy, high-buttoned boots.

Returning to the bathroom, she lifted the heavy wool robes from the floor and settled them around her shoulder. Having felt the press of emotions and memories from all sides, she now realized that Severus’ robes were different. They carried despair with them, but also a deep, almost desperate conviction to set things right that let her ignore the memories. She wrapped herself in his Death Eater robes to shield against the alien emotions that clamored at the edge of her reason. Fingering the mask, she looked back up into the shattered mirror.

She couldn’t feel her own pain, but she could make them suffer, all those people who’d caused her pain. She couldn’t go back to her own grave, but she could bury those who had killed her and everything she loved. She heard the crow fluttering against the window. She couldn’t wait for Severus. It was time.

She smiled, and a dozen refracted Lilys—broken and bloody—smiled back.


	4. Tracking the Prey

_October 30, 12:00pm_

 

Getting clothes for Lily had not been easy. It had taken several hours for the morning traffic in Diagon Alley to disperse to the point where Snape could slip unseen into an obscure little clothing shop at the end of the street. The proprietress had been happy—or rather, terrified—enough to close the shop for him, but she dithered forever over helping him. She was certain that he was buying the robes as some sort of sick game involving a poor, captured Muggle, never considering that, were she correct, he’d have no need or reason to hide it. He’d been forced to Obliviate her. Hufflepuffs. It was a wonder any of them could manage to fasten their robes, much less work any magic.

Still, he’d succeeded in staying hidden from anyone with more than two thoughts to rub together, anyone who might wonder what exactly he needed the clothing for, and why he was acquiring it so secretively. Also, the shopkeeper’s nattering proved a useful distraction from the conflicting morass of thoughts and feelings that clamored for Snape’s attention. Now, as he made his way towards the Leaky Cauldron and the safe anonymity of Muggle London on the other side, the thoughts held in check began to break free.

Lily was alive. She was alive, and she hated him. She was alive, and just like her fool son, she was going to get herself killed in a futile attempt to destroy Voldemort. Snape had told her, just as he’d tried to tell the Order: as long as the final Horcrux remained out there somewhere, the Dark Lord was invincible.

Snape had to stop her somehow. Given his ‘druthers, he’d convince her to leave Britain and its problems far behind, but he already knew that she wouldn’t agree to that. He’d have to use guile and cunning—trick her into leaving for her own good.

He was almost to the front entrance of the Cauldron, taking his usual circuitous route through the shadows of the public room, when his scattered attention was snared by a whispered conversation between two patrons.

“—the Dark Mark, that as hasn’t been seen since _His_ death, there as clear as anythin’, hangin’ above in the sky.”

“And Nott? I hear that what the Dark Lord did to ‘im….”

“'Tisn’t right. Not ever, to die like that. There’s no-one as knows what he did to upset the Dark Lord, but it must have been somethin’ terrible, to kill a man like he did. And in his own home. Just 'tisn’t right.”

Snape halted, gaze darting towards the two men as the thrust of their conversation penetrated his awareness, but already they had noticed him and were staring hard into their drinks. If they’d started whistling, they couldn’t have looked more suspicious. In the normal course of things, Snape might have questioned them, but a chilling certainty had taken hold of him.

As far as he knew, Nott remained high in Voldemort’s favor. The fête he had hosted the night before, though not attended by the Dark Lord, had been a fitting tribute to Voldemort’s reign. While none of the Death Eaters were unassailable, Nott came as close as one could. And Snape had left an angry and self-righteous Gryffindor alone for several hours.

With growing unease lending him speed, Snape hurried out of the Leaky Cauldron.

It took him several minutes to find a safe, deserted alley to Disapparate from. He appeared in the old, abandoned mews down the lane from Nott’s mansion and made his way quietly to the rear gate. Letting himself in, he was struck by a miasma of wrongness permeating the place. There should have been house-elves cleaning after last night’s fête, but everything at the rear of the house was still. Snape was only slightly relieved to note that no Dark Mark hovered in the sky. The gossip he had overheard must have been second- or third-hand.

Snape made his way into the house beyond the kitchens. The feeling of wrongness intensified. It was the smell—the distinct odor of charred meat, so out of place in the Georgian mansion. It grew stronger the closer he came to the ballroom. He made his way to the servant’s entrance behind the musicians’ alcove.

What he saw when he entered was enough to make even his hardened stomach turn. He shook his head in unconscious denial. She wouldn’t have done this. Not this. Whoever had done this, it couldn’t have been her.

The Nott family was an old wizarding family, tracing their lineage back to the days before the Inquisition. They often bragged of forbears who had become successful witch hunters during the Burning Times, tracking down and persecuting innocent Muggles for the sadistic irony of it.  


Whoever had killed Nott had done so with similarly sadistic irony. The ballroom’s chandeliers had been lowered, probably for cleaning after the fête, but one of them was raised again. Nott’s charred corpse was chained to it. Underneath, the remains of a bonfire made from broken chairs smoldered red amongst black ashes. Traced in black ash around the bonfire was the ragged outline of a bird in flight.

“The fire was purposely constructed to burn slowly. He must have screamed for at least the first half-hour. It’s a wonder the house-elves didn’t take him down.”

Snape stiffened as Lucius Malfoy, ever cool and collected, strolled up to him. Malfoy arched one fair brow and looked up at the tableau of Nott’s murder. His cocked head resembled that of a critic at an art gallery opening—distantly appreciative, but still looking for something to disparage. “Of course, with his tongue cut out, any commands he gave to the elves were probably unintelligible.” Malfoy tsked, and Snape got the distinct impression that the other man was clicking his tongue over the poor quality of servants rather than the death of their comrade.

“So, Voldemort _did_ order this?” Snape’s voice, when he found it, was as cold and unaffected as his companion’s.

“No.” Scorn shot through Malfoy’s denial. “Our _Lord_ did not condone any such action. Though I imagine he would be impressed by the inventiveness of the execution, were he not livid about its occurrence. He sent me to investigate. But tell me, Severus, what brings you here? It seems very convenient that you should be on the scene so quickly.”

Using Voldemort’s name had been a slip. Snape drew himself up and pulled his robes close, like armor. “Rumors have already spread to Diagon Alley. I came here to investigate as well and to report to _our Lord_ any truth I might find.”

“Ah, yes. Ever the obedient lapdog.”

The taunt set Snape at ease. Malfoy was just baiting him. He wouldn’t descend into petty sniping like that if he had any real suspicion that Snape might be involved in Nott’s death. Still, it was better to cut such snipings short before they grew into something more substantial that could be used later.

“Yes, Lucius. I have always been a loyal supporter of Lord Voldemort.” This time, he used the name deliberately. Because he _could_. He had earned that right with Dumbledore’s death. “And a competent one. No _Snape_ has ever disappointed the Dark Lord, or failed to carry out one of his orders.”

It was a cruel blow, referring to Draco like that. Not only had the boy’s death devastated his father, but the younger Malfoy’s failures had diminished Lucius’ standing with Voldemort. At Snape’s words, Malfoy’s cool demeanor cracked; a sharp breath hissed between his teeth, and his eyes flashed with pain and hatred. His knuckles whitened around the head of his cane. For a moment, Snape thought the other man might actually strike him. Malfoy was cannier than that, however. He quickly brought himself under control.

“Of course.” Malfoy smiled tightly. “No one would dare imply otherwise, Severus. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must arrange to have _that_ removed,” he flicked a hand towards Nott’s suspended and charred corpse, “and take my report back to our Lord.”

“By all means.” Snape turned to leave, not envying Lucius the report he would have to make and the inevitable Crucio that would follow. Some remnant of pity made him turn again. “Lucius. Rumor on Diagon Alley is that the Dark Mark was seen floating above this place—that Nott was killed because he slighted our Lord in some fashion. I’m sure that with a bit of judicious tweaking, this… unfortunate circumstance could only further Lord Voldemort’s reputation and power.”

Malfoy didn’t say anything, but the look of relief that flashed across his features as Snape turned away again was acknowledgement enough of the favor. Whatever his flaws might be, Lucius Malfoy genuinely mourned his son’s death, and that honest feeling earned him a small bit of mercy in Snape’s eyes.

 _For you, Draco_ , he thought as he made his way back to 12 Grimmauld Place and a confrontation he was beginning to dread.

 

***

 

Lily watched from the shadows as Severus entered the Leaky Cauldron, shrinking back and pulling up her hood in case he might glance around and spot her. He was too intent on staying hidden himself to notice her, however. So intent that he almost missed the buzz of rumor that already circled amongst the patrons. He stopped as he neared the door, a look of disbelief and annoyance briefly flashing across his features. The men he’d overheard fell silent, but they’d said enough. Severus strode out the door with renewed purpose and looking very angry.

 _He knows_ , Lily thought.

Nott hadn’t been particularly forthcoming as she prepared him for death, even before she had sliced away his tongue. He hadn’t known anything about the Horcruxes or where she might find Voldemort. He’d even proven useless for telling her where to find his fellow Death Eaters. It was only near the end that she learned that one of them might have taken rooms in the Leaky Cauldron. That was after Nott’s tongue was gone, and she’d had to narrow down what he was trying to say by using the bonfire in a game of reverse hot and cold.

It hadn’t helped that he kept choking on his own blood.

She was jarred from her reverie when a black shape fluttered in through the entrance usually reserved for owls. It landed on a beam high above her and pecked lightly at the wood a few times with its hard beak. Glancing back at the entrance to the pub, she saw an oily, slick-looking wizard in a greatcloak sweep in, dragging a bruised and bound young woman—a Muggle from the look of her clothing—in his wake. The buzz of gossip fell quiet. All of the patrons looked shocked at the unlikely couple, and Lily noticed that several faces tightened in despair, and several sets of shoulders sagged in defeat.

The oily wizard was making some sort of impromptu speech to the patrons about what happened to Mudbloods who stood against the Dark Lord, but Lily was already slipping up the back stairs. She had her own assignation to keep.


	5. Captive Child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for mentions of torture, murder, and rape. Also, general misogyny of the serial-killer variety.

Avery finished his speech to the cowardly sheep huddled in the Leaky Cauldron, then shoved Granger up the stairs towards his room.

She was his prize. Oh, he’d have to turn her over to the Dark Lord tonight, and she’d have to be in relatively undamaged condition, but he was the one who had tracked her down, hunting her for months. Most of Voldemort’s supporters thought her dead, but they were wrong. Avery never doubted. Something kept the resistance going, and it had to be her. She had been the center, their last living symbol of hope. With Granger’s capture and the public spectacle of her death, the Dark Lord’s power would be secure.

And it was Avery who had found her, not that crazy Lestrange bitch— _a right nutter, she is_ —the increasingly incompetent Malfoy, or the treacherous Severus Snape— _still don’t trust that half-blood bastard_. Not any of them. Him. Avery. A second-generation Death Eater and son to Voldemort’s first supporter. In reward, to him was given the honor of preparing Granger for her presentation to the Dark Lord.

He hoped she was a screamer.

Opening the door to the room he regularly used for his diversions, Avery ushered the bound girl in. He shoved her onto the bare wooden bedframe. The new proprietor of the Leaky Cauldron always made sure to remove the mattress for him; a simple Scouring Charm could only clean up so much blood.

“Are you going to rape me?”

The loud-mouthed bitch hadn’t stayed silent for more than two minutes since he’d caught her. He spared her a sneer as he swept off his cloak and hung it on a hook. He pulled a dark velvet bundle from the deep pockets and moved towards the bed.

“No. I’m not. Unlike the others, I don’t fancy fucking animals… or vermin.”

He unrolled the bundle on the bedside table, his hand lightly, lovingly skimming over the implements nestled in the black. They were beautiful—gleaming steel blades of different lengths and widths, with handles of chased silver. The set was one of the few Avery family heirlooms. His family tree wasn’t particularly distinguished like the others in the Twenty-Eight, but it did have a few luminaries lighting it, and a strong family tradition passed from father to son.

He pulled out one of the knives, the one that he hadn’t had a chance to use on the last Muggle whore before she died. He’d make it up to the blade this time. It was a rather large, single-edged knife with several wicked barbs along its back edge. For all its size, it was satisfyingly sharp. He heard the Granger girl’s breath catch. She began struggling frantically against her bonds, so he pulled out his wand with his free hand. He hated strugglers. The work went more cleanly when his patients would just lie still.

Before he could cast the spell to immobilize her, he heard a rustling at the window. A large black crow flap through the open casement, lighting on the top edge of the wardrobe.

“What the…? Here, you. Get out of here.” He moved to shoo away the cawing bird, slashing at it with the blade. That’s when he saw the cloaked figure, dressed like a Death Eater, watching from the shadows between the wardrobe and the window.

“Here now. Who’re you? How’d you get in here?”

“‘ _Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, in there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore_ ,’” the intruder replied in a woman’s low, sing-song voice.

“What? What’s that mean, then?” Avery’s hand tightened around the handle of his blade. He hated to be interrupted. It set him off his game. “You better have a good reason for coming in here. Did our Lord send you? If not, it’ll be the worse for you. Who are you?”

“‘ _Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore._ ’” The intruder cocked her hooded head. Her shoulders sagged and she sighed like his mother used to when she found one of his animal patients. Before he silenced his mother’s sighs for good. “Really, Avery, you should have bothered to read some Muggle literature at some point. It might have saved your life.”

“Muggle lit—?” The clinical detachment he’d been stoking in himself dissipated, and he was left with hot fury. Dropping his wand, he lunged, slamming the figure against the wall with one hand around her throat and the wicked blade flat alongside her masked cheek. He trembled with rage and excitement as he pressed against her. Bugger wands. He’d always preferred the up and close. Sliding the blade along the fabric of the hood, he slowly cut her mask away. The Death Eater’s hood fluttered to the floor like a dying black bird.

She was pretty in an Irish sort of way: red hair and green eyes. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. Then again, he liked the Irish girls… did them a lot. They were made of sturdier stuff than the English; they lasted longer. That was probably why she looked so familiar. Behind him, the Granger girl gasped. He spared her a brief glance.

She was staring at the woman, cow-eyes wide and jaw slack-open. Probably hoping he’d do the woman first and give her a little more time. Not a bad idea, that. It would take the edge off, so that he’d be sure not to damage the Dark Lord’s prize too much. Plus, Granger was panting in uneven, wheezing breaths. He should have known. Not a screamer, that one. A breather. The worst sort, really, all that gasping and huffing. Like cutting open a great big bellows. Not a bit of satisfaction in them.

He turned his attention back to the woman he had pinned to the wall. Despite his rough grip at her throat, she was smiling softly at him like a mother. Or a lover. Ah, now this one, she’d try not to scream, but he knew eventually he could pull it from her like sweet music.

He moved his knife to her throat and quickly searched her with his free hand. He found nothing, neither wand nor weapon, just layers and layers of black velvet. She smiled the entire time his hand groped her body. Once he was sure she was clean, he slid his hand into the hair at her nape to steady her head, smiling back at her.

“Well isn’t this my lucky day. That was a pathetic rescue attempt, sweeting. What, did you think I wouldn’t know right off you weren’t really a Death Eater?” He thrust her more firmly against the wall, but her smile just widened. “Oh, you like that, do you?” The knife slid up to graze her cheek and he leaned close to whisper, “I’ll give you something to smile about.”

The Mudblood on the bed gave a choked gurgle, but the redhead’s eyes just widened slightly as Avery carved her a smile from ear to ear. The flesh of her cheeks parted so easily before the silver edge of his blade, just the slightest bit of resistance. The blood wept like warm satin over his hand.

He laughed for the sheer joy of it, but his exultation was cut short when she threw back her head and laughed with him. Her mouth was open too wide, slit cheeks gaping, blood streaming down her throat to soak the darkness of her cloak. Unnerved, he pushed away from her, stumbling back several steps.

Her head jerked forward again, her mouth clacking shut with the force of the movement. The wounds he’d carved across her face began to knit together. When she smiled again, her cheeks were whole and unblemished, only the blood that smeared across them stood as proof that he’d sliced her.

“What is this?” he whispered.

“I’ll tell you what it isn’t, Avery.” Her smile dropped, and suddenly he knew where he’d seen those piercing green eyes before. “It isn’t your lucky day.”

With a mad roar, he charged at her with his knife thrust out. It seemed as if she might simply stand there and let him stick her, but then he heard Granger’s shouted, “ _Impedimenta!_ ” behind him. The familiar torpor seized his legs. He toppled to the floor in his headlong rush.

The woman darted forward, catching up his bloodied knife and skewering his right hand to the wooden floorboards with it. Moments later, his left hand was pinned by another of his blades, and she was straddling him. She draped the rest of the velvet bundle across his stomach. Granger, that filthy Mudblood, sat huddled on the bare bedframe. She held his discarded wand in her bound hands, twisting to one side of her so she could train it on him. She was still staring at the green-eyed woman like she was a ghost, but now Avery knew why. Granger’s hesitant whisper was all the confirmation he needed.

“You… you’re Lily Potter.”

The edges of his vision beginning to buzz white with the pain from his hands, but the woman at the center of his vision stood out clear as cut crystal. It was true. He recognized her from school. It couldn’t be, but it was Lily Evans.

The red-haired woman, who couldn’t be Evans but somehow was, rose from her straddling position. She moved over to the Dark Lord’s prize, the prize that Avery had worked so hard to capture, and cut her free with his own blades. He snarled at this and struggled against the knives pinning his hands, but the effort only made the white film edging his senses buzz more loudly. Evans glanced back at him, and her face was as cold as any Death Eater’s.

“I’m only letting you keep your tongue because I want information. If you keep this up, I’ll cut it out like I did Nott’s.”

His struggles subsided, and he panted to keep from passing out. Granger prattled questions while Evans crouched beside him and examined his precious heirlooms.

“How… how can this be? You’re really here. You saved me. Are you here to stop Voldemort? How are you alive? Everyone thought you were dead. How is this possible? Is Harry alive, too?”

Evans looked up from her perusal of Avery’s knives, and whatever look was in her eyes, it shut Granger up. “You knew Harry?”

Granger knelt down on Avery’s other side. His breathing had eased, the pain had subsided, but everything around him had a strange, muffled quality, as if he was wrapped in cotton. Granger was crying. She hadn’t cried once since he’d taken her captive, and _now_ she was crying? Bitch.

“He… he was my best friend.”

Evan’s face took on a strange, hungry expression. “Show me.”

“Show… what? I… I don’t know how—” But Evans was already reaching across Avery, reaching for Granger, brushing her bloody hands over the younger girl’s bushy hair. Nothing happened to Granger, but Evans gasped. Her eyes clamped shut, her fingers tangled in the girl’s hair. She began trembling, then shaking as though a seizure had come upon her. She tore away, breathing rough and ragged. A tear formed and slid down her cheek.

“Enough,” she whispered, trying to wipe the tear away. She only succeeded in smearing it into the blood. She looked up at Granger, then back down at Avery. Picking up a knife, she began slicing away his clothing with calm deliberation.

“You should leave now,” she told Granger. “Harry is dead. And so is everyone who killed him.” Avery shuddered as she laid the cold scalpel against his cheek. The intensity of those green eyes was entirely focused on him. “Though some of them have yet to be informed of their demise.”

He heard Granger scrambling to escape the room, but he couldn’t look away from those eyes. His death had finally come for him, and he couldn’t look away.

“Now,” Lily Evans said when they were alone, “I believe we were learning to smile….”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The two lines that Lily quotes are of course from Poe’s “The Raven” (can one do a Crow fic without it?). I won’t include a lot of poetry quotes, but in my mind a Crow story just isn’t a Crow story without them.


	6. Her Eyes, So Innocent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short chapter, so I'm posting two chapters today. Happy Monday!

Snape smelled the blood the moment Lily entered the house. It mixed with the smell of rain on wool and other scents… darker and fouler. Scents he’d encountered before, but never thought to associate with _her_. He stepped into the hallway as she mounted the stairs, ready to confront her over what he had found at Nott’s mansion. The sight of her robbed him of words like a punch to the gut.

She was covered in viscera, drying to a sticky mass and smelling at this close range like the worst of charnel houses. Blood smeared across the lower half of her face, and in her hand, she carried a vicious-looking steel blade with barbs along the back edge. Like her, it was sticky with blood.

She paused on the stairway, regarding him over the banister. A flash of something that might have been remorse crossed her features, but it was quickly concealed. That flash gave him time and sense enough to compose himself. Whatever she had done, she was conscious of the awfulness of it. Whatever Dark Arts had brought her back, there was still some remnant of the Gryffindor he had known.

“Lily.” He paused, letting the silence hang in the hopes that she would fill it. She didn’t oblige him. He gestured at her robes… _his_ robes. “That didn’t come from Nott.”

“Hmm?” She had looked away, down at the blade. She looked up at him again. “No. Avery’s knives. Avery’s blood. But he was almost as useless as Nott. He had no idea what the final Horcrux was, or where to find it. Though he did tell me where Voldemort will be tonight.”

She resumed her ascent. Snape rounded the newel post and grabbed her arm, spinning her to face him. She only had to tilt her head up a little to meet his eyes. She stood two risers above him, and their faces were almost level.

“What did you do?”

“I killed him, Severus. Why are you asking inane questions when you already know the answers? I killed him. With his own knives. Just like he killed so many before. Like he was going to kill me and that poor girl he held captive.”

“Did you kill Nott, too?”

She just cocked her head and regarded him with a look chillingly similar to the one he had once unleashed on his first years. The long-suffering look of one constantly confronted with stupidity.

The question ‘why’ died on his lips. His shoulders sagged slightly, although whether in resignation or relief, he couldn’t say. He had worried that she wouldn’t return to Grimmauld Place, but now he knew why she had.

“Vengeance,” he said. “That’s why you’re here. And you’re going to kill me next.”

“No, I’m not.” The edge to her voice made her words anything but reassuring. “I’m going to kill you last. You’re still useful to me. You know where to find them, you’ll know how to draw them out. You’ll help me, Severus, because your betrayal started this. And you’ll let me kill you in the end, because you want an end to all of this.”

He wanted to deny it, wanted to dismiss her threat with a cutting reply that would rip apart her assumptions. He couldn’t. The end was in sight, and it would be by her hand. There was a part of him that was darkly amused by the poetry of it, but a greater part of him was troubled.

“What happened to you, Lily?” he whispered. “What dark arts called you here and turned you into this…”

“This... what? Monster? But you know what happened, Severus. We’re not so different anymore. You’re nothing like the Severus I knew when we were young. You’ve become more subtle in your cunning. You’ve become so accustomed to deceiving people that I don’t believe even you know what side you’re fighting for anymore. And I….” She looked down at the knife in her hands. They began to tremble slightly.

“‘Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster…’” he murmured, realizing that he knew all too well what had brought about these changes in her.

“‘And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you,’” she finished for him. She laid her hand gently along his cheek, and the soft smile that lit her eyes was sad and knowing. “I may have become a monster, but I’m not mad, at least, no more than you are. I’m doing what needs to be done, what I’ve been called to do. After I’m done, I can rest. I can return to my family and be at peace. Will you help me? Will you help me find my rest?”

“You know I will.”

“Why?”

He remained silent, unwilling to play this particular game of question and answer.

“Severus?” she prompted.

“You know why.” His answer was sullen, begrudging. He felt awkward and seventeen again.

“Yes. I do.” She lowered her hand, and he closed his eyes against the pity in her gaze. He heard her turn, heard her soft tread up the stairs. “I’m going to wash and change and maybe sleep. You should do the same.”

Her final words stayed with him long after she closed the door to her room:

“ _We’re going to have a busy night.”_

 


	7. Rain Forever

“What’s this?”

Lily glanced up at Severus’ question as she adjusted one of his Death Eater cloaks around her shoulders. She had been only mildly surprised to find he had several. Apparently, blood-drenched cloaks were a hazard when one was a Death Eater. Underneath the cloak, she was wearing another of Walburga’s ensembles, this one in severe black gabardine and worsted. Severus had offered her a set of newly-tailored wizarding robes, but they buzzed with a shopkeeper’s idle and inane speculations. Lily found she preferred to have the Black matriarch’s hatred and pureblood prejudice seething at the edges of her senses.

She stilled as Severus lifted a hand and gently traced the black slashes she’d drawn across her cheeks. She knew from her time before the cracked mirror upstairs that, with her pale skin and black-smudged eyes, the marks gave her the look of a mad-grinning clown. Her lips widened in a smile that held no humor.

“A reminder, Severus. Every wound should leave a scar. It’s what makes us human.”

She could feel the panic rising to the surface as she contemplated what she’d done after Avery had given her those wounds, as she contemplated what she was called to do this night. Severus blinked at her words, but his cold, black eyes remained shuttered and distant. She wondered how long ago he’d abandoned his humanity. If she stayed her course, would she end up like him? A gloomy, black crow living in the past, gazing sullenly out at the world from behind his loneliness, cawing his dissatisfaction whenever anyone dared to disturb his solitude?

“You’re human, Lily—”

“Not now, Severus.” She marveled at the improbability of comfort coming from him. His finger was still tracing her cheek. She shook it away. “Later… you can make your attempts to comfort me later.” Her black-feathered guide landed on the porch railing. She smiled humorlessly when Severus jerked away from the bird as though he feared it. Didn’t he realize they were of a feather? Her very own Huginn and Muninn, leading her through the afterlife, guiding her through the darkness of her own mind. “Let us go. We have work to do.”

The crow launched itself into the air, soaring through the gloaming. The darkening landscape of London spread out under it like a grimy topographical map. Down below, Severus led her through the rain-slicked streets. The gloomy drizzle that had started in the early hours had not let up. It darkened pavement and stone in shades of gray, draining color and life from the city.

With a strange, layered vision, Lily looked down from the crow’s perspective of the same streets she was traveling through in Severus’ wake. It was dizzying and seductive. The omniscient perspective of the crow let her leave behind her body, her thoughts, her pain and fear and guilt. Most of all, it let her avoid the flashes of emotions and memories that she pulled from everything she touched. When she soared free, the trace remnants of bloodsmell, the recollection of Nott’s wordless howls and Avery’s choked begging, of the feel of Severus’ wary gaze boring into her, all were left behind. When she gave herself up to that other vision, that other layer of perception, she was able to ignore the pangs of empathy and compassion. It gave her the detachment necessary to do what she had to do.

And it horrified her.

She pulled back from the soaring abyss of the crow’s presence above, stopped and leaned against a nearby wall for support. Severus backtracked to her side, tentatively placing one hand on her arm in concern.

“Lily….”

“I’m fine.” She struggled away his concern, even as she focused on his voice, his touch, to anchor her to her body, to the shadowed alley, and to the enormity of what she was about to do. She shook her head and continued walking; Severus fell in at her side.

“Tell me about them,” she instructed him.

“Sorry?”

She didn’t turn to look at him, didn’t need to. His confusion was evident from his tone. “The others. Voldemort’s supporters. Why do they follow? What is it about them that allows them to do these… things?” She knew already, somehow. Asking him was pointless. She knew because the crow knew. Yet she wanted—needed—to know from a rational source. She needed to know as a normal woman might know.

When he remained silent, she filled the space between them with words. “Vengeance is a horrid thing, Severus, but at least we can carve meaning into it through metaphor or irony. Nott was a hedonist, so he was consumed by the flames of his own pleasures. Avery was a sadist who tasted the steel of his own blades. But what of the others?”

She sensed his hesitation as he processed the implication that what he told her would inform how she killed them—his colleagues, his _friends_. He had known Avery since their Hogwarts days, and yet he’d been more concerned about her than about his friend’s death. She wondered if he was aware how twisted and shadowed his loyalties had become.

Or perhaps, she conceded, they’d always been this ambiguous. She couldn’t be sure; the Severus Snape she’d known had kept everyone at a distance with sullen looks and an acidic tongue. He’d always given the impression of being emotionally unassailable. Affectless.

It was what had drawn James and Sirius to torment him so brutally, that challenge Severus offered. It was what drew her to him now, for different reasons. His quiet presence was a more comforting refuge than the soaring abyss that cawed above her and called her to vengeance. She knew what he wanted from her. She understood it. And when she let her mind flicker over possibilities, it didn’t fill her with revulsion the way the thought of killing did. It was an irony, that he was the closest thing she had to a refuge from the madness that drove her.

“Crabbe and Goyle.” His rich voice broke the silence that had stretched between them. It took her a moment to realize that it was in response to her question. Apparently, Severus had decided to cast his loyalties with her. His tone was thick with sneering. “They’re interchangeable. Too much inbreeding, perhaps. They’re bullies, simple and straightforward. They like having power and they like wielding it. If they were more intelligent, they’d be Voldemort’s most trusted lieutenants because their ambitions are so simple and easily fed. But I suppose if they were more intelligent, they wouldn’t be so simple.”

He fell silent as they passed a few Muggles, homeless and huddled in the alleyway they were traversing. Human trash. She felt a twinge of guilt, all her own. She hadn’t even noticed them until he did.

“Bellatrix,” he continued once they’d left the shivering forms behind. “She’s insane. She’s more Voldemort’s toy than a serious lieutenant. Fanatically loyal, but completely unpredictable. Lucius is entirely the opposite. If you understand his motivations, he’s completely predictable and not the least bit loyal.”

“Why not?”

“He lost his son.”

His son. Lily’s hands fisted in the folds of her borrowed cloak. She released them just as quickly when the memories of another boy, as fair as Harry had been dark, assailed her. And an echo of love. Severus’s love. Strong. Though never so strong as a mother’s.

No. No pity. Not for Severus, not for Lucius Malfoy. Not for love tangled with ambition and deception. Damned Slytherins.

“And what are his motivations?” she asked, surprised to find her voice steady when her resolve was so shaken.

“He’s an ideologue. He believes his own rhetoric. Utterly. Superiority of the Purebloods, separation from the Muggle world. He followed Voldemort because he convinced himself that a megalomaniacal half-blood could bring about the world he wanted. He’s so stubbornly convinced in the rightness of his own beliefs, one could almost mistake him for a Gryffindor.”

Severus had stopped before a door in the alley. She stopped at his side so that he had to hunch over her to answer her question.

“Pettigrew,” Severus snorted dismissively, “Pettigrew wants power, but he’s too much a coward to take it for himself. He bends and scrapes and lurks in the shadows, feeding off the scraps he’s offered. He’s the perfect sycophant, and the first who'll run at the sign of trouble.”

He lapsed into silence then reached for the door handle. She grasped his arm, staying him. She wasn’t finished with him yet.

“And you?” she asked.

His arm tensed beneath her hand. If she hadn’t been touching him, she doubted she would have sensed his reaction. She allowed herself a small smile at his self-containment. Didn’t he realize that it just enticed others—James, Sirius, and now her—to try to break it?

“I suppose I’m a pragmatist,” he breathed. He tugged at her grip, but she tightened it, pulling him even closer to her as she did. The black of their robes mingled.

“A pragmatist? You prefer to deal in realities? No madness or ideologies or dreams of power for you?” She pressed even closer, playing the sudden tension between them. The muscles of his forearm flexed, and his breathing came too quick, too shallow. Perhaps his pupils blackened, but who could tell? His eyes were already glitter-dark and hidden in the shadows of his brow.

He licked his lips, and she mimicked the gesture. Slowly, making him suffer, marveling at her own bent towards sadism. Above her, the crow cawed in approval. “Poor Severus,” she whispered across his lips. “You never dreamed I would return. The thought never entered your reality. My presence, it must be torment for you, pragmatist that you are.”

She stepped away then, letting the tension snap. His eyes flashed; he looked like Avery when she’d gutted him. Lily reached for the door, a satisfied smile slipping across her face because she’d got to him. This time it was his grip that stopped her.

“And you, Lily?”

She glanced at his hand on her arm, then up into the blackness of his eyes. He’d shuttered them again. She could have easily twisted away from his grip, turned away from his question, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“We already discussed this,” she replied. “I’m a monster.”

“No, Lily. You’re not. You don’t have to be.”

“No…” She started to pull away then, but something, some flicker of feeling in his eyes stopped her, compelling her to give him a more honest answer than she’d intended. “No. But I have a monster inside me. Very close to the surface. Who must be fed if I’m ever to return to my rest. That’s all that matters. The death of one monster to sate another.”

She opened the door, letting them in to the building that would house Voldemort’s victory celebration.

And his defeat.

 


	8. Pain and Retribution

Goyle was nervous.

If asked why, he would have denied it. Actually, if anyone had asked him why, he would have bashed their face in, then shoved it into the pavement while he cast a nice flensing curse for good measure. When Goyle was nervous, he got even meaner than usual.

The revel had started, but most of the early arrivals stood in small clusters, worrying over the news of the day. The whispers about what had been done to Nott were getting louder, but Lucius Malfoy had done his job well, slipping in and out of enough conversations that people were beginning to repeat the party line. By the time the Dark Lord arrived, every soul in the room would be claiming with conviction that Nott’s fate was what awaited any who angered their Master. Some of them might even believe it.

Goyle didn’t believe it. Not that such an act was beyond the Dark Lord, but that Nott’s death was due to the Dark Lord’s retribution. Goyle knew about Avery; he had seen the evidence first-hand when he and Crabbe had gone to get Granger. The Mudblood had been long gone, and Avery’s blood….

Goyle took a hefty swig from his flask of firewhiskey and surveyed the oblivious revelers. For the first time, he found himself envying them. None of them had to spend the afternoon scouring the bloody imprint of a bird from the walls of an anonymous room in the Leaky Cauldron.

The only piece of luck so far this day was that Crabbe had the bright idea to bring in Malfoy to fix things, otherwise tonight’s revel might have been buzzing with the news of Avery’s demise as well. There was no way even Malfoy could have convinced everyone that Nott and Avery had both fallen afoul of their Lord on the same day.

So, Goyle was nervous. It was only a matter of time before someone wondered where Avery was, and why the Mudblood wasn’t on display. It was only a few steps from that before the Dark Lord’s paranoia caused him to lash out at whomever he saw fit to blame. Goyle had seen loyal Death Eaters killed by the crossfire of that kind of situation on more than one occasion.

Shoulders twitching, he looked around for someone inconsequential to hit.

“ ‘Ere, Goyle. I need your ‘elp.”

“What is it?” he growled at Crabbe, who wasn’t inconsequential, but might do in a pinch. Recalling that his compatriot was more than able to fight back, he forced his fists to unclench.

“Someone forgot to bring the specimens for Bellatrix’s experiments. She’s in a right strop about it, and Rodolphus has enough to do with preparing for our Lord’s arrival. Malfoy wants us to take care of it.”

Goyle was about to snarl that he wouldn’t be playing errand boy to the Lestranges or Malfoy, when he realized that this might not be the best time to rock the boat. Crabbe must have come to the same conclusion to submit so readily to performing such a simple task.

Still, neither of them had to like it—or be nice about it.

“Fine,” he said, taking another swig of firewhiskey. “Let’s get this over with. Maybe we can have a little fun with ‘em before we turn them over to Bellatrix.”

For the first time since his arrival at the Leaky Cauldron that afternoon, Goyle was smiling.

 

***

 

Finding specimens proved quicker and easier than either wizard had imagined. Most of the Muggles in the area around the Lestrange’s townhouse had moved away after the rash of disappearances and murders became more than even they could ignore. But every society had its dregs—the ones that didn’t matter, the ones that no-one would miss—and these huddled in conveniently large numbers in the nearby alleys and stoops. Unlike the upstanding members of Muggle society, they’d had no way to flee, nowhere safer to go to.

It was a moment’s work to grab two unsuspecting Muggles and bodily haul them back through the townhouse and down to Bellatrix’s lab. It would have gone more quickly, but the Muggles had more fight in them than Goyle or Crabbe expected, and the two wizards spent an enjoyable few minutes beating them into submission.

Hauling one of the two subdued captives down the stairs, Crabbe waited impatiently while Goyle juggled his own burden and opened the door to Bellatrix’s lab. Crabbe hated it down here. There was something distinctly… off… about the Lestranges, and Bellatrix in particular. If the rumors he heard were to be believed, the experiments she conducted down here with her Muggle victims were twisted even by Death Eater standards. Crabbe liked a good, clean beating or even a straightforward Entrail-Expelling curse as well as the next bloke, but what happened to Muggles down here….

He shuddered and followed Goyle into the room, anxious to be done and back upstairs with a mug of butterbeer, enjoying the apprehensive respect that was accorded to the Dark Lord’s inner circle.

“Oi. I thought you said nobody had gotten Lestrange her specimens.” Goyle’s irritated gripe pulled Crabbe from his musings.

“That’s what Malfoy told me.”

“Then who’s the bint?”

Crabbe opened his mouth to reply, but never got the chance to discover what his reply might have been. A dark, flapping shape launched itself at his face. He dropped the struggling captive he’d been carrying and raised his arms to protect himself from the razor talons slashing alarmingly close to his eyes. Goyle grunted, followed by a few meaty thuds and a sickening crunch of bone hitting stone.

Belatedly, Crabbe fumbled for his wand, but his wrist was caught in an unyielding grip and wrenched away from his robes. He opened his mouth to shout for help as he was forced to his knees, but a brutal strike to his throat left him choking and struggling for breath.

He blinked through sudden tears. A red-haired woman in black, her face painted in a death-rictus, grinned at him. Dizziness assailed him, but he was sure he knew her.

 _You._ Crabbe managed to mouth the word even though no sound emerged.

“Yes. Me. And you.” She locked his arm behind him and began tying him with the black cords that Bellatrix always kept in ready supply. Her almost-pleasant response was at odds with the rough way she was binding him. Goyle whimpered from the floor nearby. He seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes, and his mouth was slack and drooling. Crabbe realized he’d get no help from that quarter.

“But I’m afraid my fame precedes me. We’ve never been properly introduced. I’m Lily Potter. And you are…Goyle? Or is it Crabbe?” She finished trussing Crabbe and turned to his moaning companion. “Severus was right. You are rather interchangeable.”

 _You…killed…Avery,_ Crabbe mouthed. His breath was coming in short, shallow gasps and it was agony trying to force sound through his crushed windpipe. He yanked at his bonds, but they were so tight that they were already cutting off his circulation.

“And Nott,” she said, finishing with Goyle and giving his bindings an oddly maternal pat. With unexpected strength for such a slight woman, she hauled Goyle back into the cage where Bellatrix kept her specimens, then did the same to Crabbe. He struggled and tried frantically to shout, but only succeeded in exhausting himself.

Unconcerned, Lily Potter turned away from them and moved towards the Muggles. Too stupid to run, they were huddled near the door nursing their injuries. They shied away from her when she leaned down to speak to them, but after only a few soft words, they allowed her to stroke their heads and comfort them like imbecile children. Crabbe couldn’t hear what she said, but whatever it was sent them scrambling for the stairs without a backwards glance.

When the Muggles were gone, Potter turned back towards them. Crabbe watched in horrified fascination as she poured a measure of one of Bellatrix’s potion bases into two mugs.

“It’s an interesting property of Polyjuice Potion that despite the apparent physical changes, one is still oneself,” Potter lectured in tones that reminded Crabbe of their old Professor Slughorn. She added hair that she had pulled from the Muggles while stroking their heads, and Crabbe could hear the potion begin to bubble and froth even from across the room. The familiar, sickening stench of freshly-primed Polyjuice filled the room. “One’s magical and mental capacity remains the same, injuries sustained in one form persist to the other.” Potter picked up both mugs and approached the cage where Crabbe and Goyle were trussed. “And of course, if one dies while polyjuiced, the body will revert to its original form at the end of the duration of the potion, but one will still. Be. Dead.”

Putting one mug down, she grabbed Crabbe by the jaw and pried his mouth open, forcing the disgusting draught down his throat. He tried to close his mouth against it, tried to bite her, tried to spit it out, but she was too strong and too brutal. He was forced to swallow even past the constriction in his throat, or else choke to death on the vile potion.

The pain of the transformation distracted him from wathing while she similarly force-fed Goyle. Before Crabbe could think to try to wriggle free of his bonds, Lily Potter had turned back to him and was tightening them around his now much narrower wrists. He glared up at her and wished that he had the knack for wandless magic.

_You’re… going… to… kill… us._

“Oh, no. I have much too much to do this evening. Your fellow Death Eaters aren’t going to conveniently kill themselves. No, I think I’ll do for you what you’ve done for countless Muggles. I’ll leave you to Bellatrix’s tender ministrations. If you’re lucky, she’ll get bored with your inability to scream and finish you off quickly. If you’re _very_ lucky, the fact that you’re not wearing Muggle clothes might penetrate her addled brain. But then,” she favored him with a humorless smile, “it doesn’t appear that luck has been kind to you tonight.”

Crabbe began to struggle again as Potter rose and returned to the counter. He saw her pour a fresh mug of Polyjuice base and add three long, black hairs to it. In moments he was staring into the cold, dark eyes of Bellatrix Lestrange. He froze in fear, even knowing that it was just her imposter.

 _Please,_ he mouthed desperately, tears beginning to pour down his cheeks.

“How many pleas did you ignore?” Her borrowed face was a strange mixture of implacability and compassion. “Why should I be merciful when so many lives are owed to your lack of mercy? No. You will not find any mercy here. Death is a debt that we all must pay. And your account is long past due.”

Crabbe watched as the false-Bellatrix strode from the room. And then he could only wait in growing terror for the true-Bellatrix to arrive.

 

***

 

Snape had lost Lily within moments of their arrival.

Secreted in an alcove off the main hall of the Lestrange’s labyrinthine townhouse, he surreptitiously watched the comings and goings of his fellow Death Eaters. Hours had passed, yet so far, his spying had yielded no results. No snippet of gossip about any unusual happenings had reached his ears. There was not a clue that Lily was even present—no indication that somewhere in Lestrange House a vengeful Gryffindor revenant was torturing and killing Voldemort’s inner circle.

It struck him then that rather than skulking around hoping to hear some whisper of her doings, he could track her through the absence of her quarry. He cursed himself for being three kinds of an idiot for not thinking of that sooner.

Extracting himself from the shadows, he slid around the pockets of muttering Death Eaters. The few brave souls who noticed and dared try to approach him were frightened off with one of his deadly glares.

Unlike Nott’s spacious Georgian manor, Maîson Lestrange was a warren of twisty hallways and darkened rooms. The revel was scattered throughout the lower three levels of the house. Snape passed through salons, parlors, studies, libraries and even a linens closet in search of his fellow inner-circle members, but all he found were the lower-level enforcers and toadying sycophants who had been flocking to Voldemort’s side since The Fall.

He searched with growing disbelief. Surely she couldn’t have dispatched seven powerful wizards so quickly. It was with something akin to relief that he spied a flash of white hair against black velvet robes.

“Lucius,” Snape murmured in greeting as he slid next to the other wizard, effectively blocking the witch Lucius had been speaking with and cutting her out of the conversation.

“Severus.” Lucius’ smile was tight. “You’re socializing. How novel.”

Snape’s twist of lips made Lucius’ smile look positively effusive. “There are so few of the old guard in attendance. I thought it would be prudent.”

“What do you mean?”

That Lucius hadn’t noticed worried Snape even more. Either the other wizard was slipping, or Lily was even more subtly deadly than Snape had thought. Habit, rather than calculation, made his tone condescending. “Surely you’ve noticed. Our hosts are nowhere to be found—nor are Crabbe, Goyle or Pettigrew. Given the recent mysterious death of Nott, it occurred to me that we ought to be more cautious.”

He gauged Lucius’ reaction. He knew he had to be careful in how he played the other wizard. He didn’t want to give Lily away, but Lucius knew his in-laws better than Snape. If there were hidden rooms in Maîson Lestrange, Lucius was far more likely than Snape to know of them.

“And Avery.”

Lucius’ words interrupted Snape’s thoughts. It took Snape a moment to recollect that he was not supposed to know of Avery’s death. He pasted a look of faint confusion on his face. “Pardon?”

Lucius glanced around. Apparently deciding that even the people in the hall outside the study were too close, he pulled Snape to a bookcase, which slid silently open at the wave of Lucius’ wand. Within moments, the bookcase was sliding closed again, and Snape found himself standing in a wood-paneled hallway. Lucius muttered a Lumos charm, and dim light his aristocratic face into eerie relief.

“Avery’s dead. We found his body at the Leaky Cauldron this afternoon. It was in even worse condition than Nott’s. He had captured the Mudblood, Granger. We told Lord Voldemort that she killed Avery during her escape, but he doesn’t really believe it. Neither do I.”

“Wait. Hermione Granger is alive? She was there?”

“Keep up, Severus. She eviscerated him. Pulled out his entrails and played with them like a cat’s cradle. Or, rather, someone did.”

Even having seen Lily afterwards, even having guessed something of what she had done, seeing the normally imperturbable Lucius Malfoy shaken made the awfulness of Avery’s murder more real. Snape swallowed against the churning bile that threatened to rise and reminded himself that it was no worse than what Avery had done to countless women before.

Snape recalled Lily mentioning that Avery had a girl with him when she went to kill him. If it was the Gryffindor swot, then Granger would have recognized Lily Potter. She would have told the Order. Even now, they might be planning another foolish, doomed strike. Events were spiraling out beyond Snape’s control. Once again, he was serving at the whim of Gryffindor bravado. He hated the uncertainty of such an existence. He had to re-establish control over all the factors before the situation ended up as bolloxed as it had been the previous June.

He forced his mind back to the task at hand—find Lily, see if she had learned anything about the final Horcrux. If hadn’t, then Snape had to get her out before Voldemort arrived.

“Who do you think did it?” he asked Lucius, his cool tone betraying none of his inner turmoil.

“The landlord didn’t break when I questioned him, so either it really was Granger, or he didn’t see anything.”

“Or he did see something, but he’s more afraid of it than of Voldemort,” Snape muttered as if to himself. Lucius rose to the bait.

“Do you know something, Severus?”

“Only that two of our number are dead, and not by our Lord’s orders. And now all the others seem to be missing on the eve of our Lord’s triumphant celebration. Were this a Muggle horror movie, I would suspect one of our own, perhaps even hiding somewhere in this house.”

“And that ridiculous supposition is why anything Muggle is a waste of—” Lucius broke off as they both heard a low, animal moan from down the secret hallway. Both wizards had wands drawn in defense, and Lucius had snuffed the light of his spell, before the sound faded away.

“What is down that hall?” Snape whispered as his eyes adjusted. He noticed a faint glow from around a far turning in the hallway.

Lucius flashed him a look, “You don’t know? Ah. But of course you wouldn’t. Bellatrix never really favored you, did she? It’s the Lestrange’s… playroom.”

Snape’s lips pursed against any response he might have made. In the early days he had avoided the more sexual escapades of the inner circle. To change that after he had turned spy would have invited potentially fatal comment. Since he was both ugly and lacking in an inclination towards rape, Bellatrix hadn’t been forthcoming in her invitations. It was little wonder that he hadn’t known of the room’s existence.

Another moan sounded from down the hall. It was not a noise that Snape would have ever associated with pleasure, even of the masochistic variety. Lucius apparently was in agreement. Rather than lowering his wand or dismissing the sounds as nothing of their concern, he crept cautiously towards the bend in the passage. Snape followed.

Around the corner, a sturdy wooden door stood slightly ajar. Dim light shone from the other side. With his free hand, Lucius pushed the door open… and froze. Snape was about to snap at the other wizard to move aside when the smell hit him. It was not the first time that day that he had smelled the unmistakable combination of blood and offal. Underneath the moaning, another sound rose—a soft, rhythmic squelching.

Lucius made an incomprehensible choking noise and fumbled a pocket square to his face, turning aside in the process. With the morbid curiosity that had inspired his interest in the Dark Arts when he was younger, Snape stepped forward so that reality could supersede the awfulness of his imagination.

Reality didn’t fail him.

The Lestrange’s playroom was rather plebian in its perversion. There were stone walls covered with swags of wine-dark velvet. Manacles and chains draped over wooden crosses. A variety of leather-wrapped implements of abuse were arrayed on a rack, and from a half-open wardrobe a selection of high-quality PVC, latex, rubber, and leather gleamed darkly.

A huge, wrought-iron bed dominated the center of the room. It was obviously placed with the intent to draw the eye, but Snape’s gaze kept slipping past it, unable to parse what was before him into a coherent picture.

Blood pooled black against the crimson of the bedspread, and dripped down either side of the bed, forming an inkblot shape that looked like nothing so much as a great, dark bird in flight. Chains led from the twisted headboard and footboard to a bloody lump huddled in the center of the bed. At first it looked like an abomination, with too many limbs for a natural creature. As Snape stared, the shape resolved into two separate forms curled tightly around one another. One of the forms was deathly still, but the other rocked compulsively back and forth. He was pumping desperately into the mouth of the body he clutched, while his own mouth burrowed into the hollow gut cavity, devouring flesh down to the white bone of the spine.

Snape stumbled back, gulping deep breaths of the slightly fresher corridor air to keep down his bile. Lucius appeared to be doing the same.

Taking a deep breath and covering his lower face with his robes, Snape took two steps into the room and thrust his wand towards the bed with a growled, “ _Finite Incantatum!_ ”

Nothing happened. The mass of flesh that was Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange continued to fuck and devour itself.

Snape cast the cancelling charm again, his tone shrill from horror and disgust.

“It’s not a curse,” Lucius said, voice low and shaken. “Not a spell. It’s the chains. They’re enchanted. We have to… remove them.”

“Enchanted?” Snape looked at Malfoy so he wouldn’t have to look at the grotesque on the bed any longer. Lucius’ eyes slid away from his, away from the bed. He was even paler than usual. Snape imagined he didn’t look much better himself.

“One of Bellatrix’s… toys. They’re enchanted with a Desideres charm. To increase one’s…” He choked; closed his eyes, “appetites.”

Breathing shallowly, Snape approached the bed. Puzzling out where the chains connected to the bodies they held was hellish in its own right. He was forced to decompartmentalize his awareness of the shapes on the bed in order to understand how they fit together. Rodolphus’ face was buried in his dead brother’s belly. He seemed to be chewing on a bit of gristle attached to the hipbone.

 _And the hipbone’s connected to the…_ Snape followed the rhyme down Rabastan’s leg and found the shackles at his ankles. They clicked open as he touched them with his wand tip and muttered, “ _Alohomora._ ” Two manacled wrists were wrapped around Rabastan’s knees. As he released them, Rudolphus shivered. The squelching sounds of mastication ceased, and soft sobs rose in their wake.

Ignoring the sobs, Snape traced a path back up the bodies, past where Rodolphus’ mouth was crying bubbles into his brother’s gut, past where his chewed entrails were draped across his brother’s chest, past where his torn and bloody cock still fucked his brother’s slack mouth. Snape found two more manacled ankles and flopping nearby a pair of manacled wrists. He released them. There was a relieved whimper from Rabastan’s belly.

“We have to know what... how... this happened,” Lucius said. The coward had held back while Snape released Rudolphus from the Desideres enchantment, but now he lunged forward before Snape could stop him. “ _Leglimens_.”

“No!” Lucius wasn’t the Leglimens that Snape was, but death memories were the strongest. A rank amateur would be able to see who had done this. Snape cast his own Leglimens so that he could better see exactly what he would have to obliviate in a few moments.

_Bellatrix, luring her husband and his brother into the room with a coy smile and a swish of bustled skirts. The men, kissing, while Bella watched. The chains. Unexpected. Nervous laughter. Another smile from Bella as she spoke the word that awakened the enchantment._

Snape jerked out of the memory before the combination of desire and fear overwhelmed him. Lucius had stumbled out of the room to retch.

Backing away from the bed, Snape leveled his wand at the still twitching form of Rodolphus Lestrange.

 “ _Avada Kedavra.”_

He fled to the corridor, shut the doors against the sight and the smell, breathing deep breaths of fresh air.

Lucius Malfoy had already collected himself. He favored Snape with a measuring look.

“Our Lord won’t thank you for being so merciful. He will have wanted to question Lestrange.”

Snape allowed himself the luxury of an extra moment to compose himself before responding. “Rudolphus wouldn’t have survived long enough for us to bring a mediwitch,” he said, pleased that his voice at least had returned to its detached drone, “nevermind surviving Voldemort’s questions.”

“Perhaps you are right. Even so...” It was a sign of how shaken Lucius still was that he didn’t twit Snape for using Voldemort’s name so casually. “There is still one person available for questioning.

“Bellatrix,” Snape replied uneasily. That smile, that second smile, after the men had been chained and the coy act had been dropped. He knew that smile, and it did not belong to Bellatrix Lestrange. “We should find her before our Lord does.”

“So we should.” Lucius tapped his cane, the echoes loud in the narrow stone hallway. “And I trust if we do, you’ll restrain your more merciful inclinations?”

Making no promises, Severus followed Lucius back to the public rooms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote “Death is a debt we all must pay” is from Euripides.


	9. Devil's Night

_**October 31, 12:00am** _

 

The Polyjuice had worn off. Lily was no longer straining the seams of her borrowed finery with Bellatrix’s borrowed body. Perched high atop a Victorian cupola, she peered down at her next victim as he scurried along the narrow walkway between houses.

Pettigrew’s shoulders were hunched under his ratty black coat, and even from four stories above, she imagined she could see his nose twitching as his head swung back and forth. He moved cautiously along the trash-strewn passage, a few feet at a time, casting nervous glances over his shoulder and wary glances ahead. His face was in shadow, but his silver hand gleamed in the darkness.

Lily swayed on the rooftop, caught in a peculiar triple vision. She saw Pettigrew from her vantage, and she saw him from the crow’s soaring height, but most of all she saw him through memories both hers and not hers. She remembered a pudgy boy whose desperation for the approval of his friends caused him to laugh too loudly and at the wrong things. She saw him grow bitter the more he tried and failed to measure up to his more dashing friends. When the other three Marauders confidently, almost unconsciously, drew the eyes of girls, he remained the pudgy, pimply tag-along. When the others mastered animal forms that were noble, valiant, and true, he became vermin, a lord of filth. She saw his first, shaky steps into Voldemort’s circle, saw how he manipulated her and James and Sirius. She saw his betrayal, heard him whisper the secret of their hiding place into Voldemort’s ear. She saw him now, scurrying away in the hopes that he would be overlooked by whatever force threatened Voldemort’s inner circle.

A black shape plummeted through the darkness, feathered wingtips brushing the walls of the houses that loomed on either side of the walkway. The crow dipped, causing Pettigrew to yelp and duck and shake his silver hand at the receding shadow that had attacked him. Lily stood on the edge of the cupola, grim gaze fixed on the man she had once called friend. She let the crow’s cold thirst for vengeance wash over her. She became something not quite herself. She stepped forward into the abyss.

The wind of her passing was like a gentle caress. It caused her hair and cloak and skirts to billow above her, like an illustration in a book of fairy stories she’d once owned. In the story, the heroine was stolen away by the wind to become Death’s bride. The picture was done in the clean, flowing lines of art-nouveaux, and the girl’s face had been entirely at peace, despite the terror of her predicament. Lily had always wondered if the girl was already dead. Now she knew.

She landed and absorbed the impact with a crouch, as if falling from four stories was nothing to her—as if it was something she did every day. Pettigrew was facing away, still searching for his feathered nemesis. The crow had wheeled and swooped past his head again, ruffling his thin, wispy hair with the wind of its passing. Pettigrew turned, wand raised, lips already forming a curse. He came face to face with her. His eyes widened in recognition, and the curse died in his mouth.

“Hello, Peter.” Lily smiled gently.

***

The house was in an uproar when Snape and Malfoy quietly let themselves out of the study. Revelers in Death Eater robes hurried past them in both directions, ignoring the two men. Snape exchanged an apprehensive glance with Malfoy. They moved towards the central hall with set shoulders and grim expressions. The furor could only mean that Voldemort had arrived, and that he was not pleased.

They were not two steps into the hall when they were spied by Dolohov. The tall, gaunt man pushed his way past two semi-hysterical women who were cradling a third trembling form—some bystander who’d run afoul of a random curse from her Lord. Dolohov ignored the women.

“You two. Where have you been? The Dark Lord wants you. Now.” If he expected them to quail at his words, he was in for a rude awakening. A wizard did not survive Voldemort’s inner circle for long if he was easily intimidated.

“Excellent,” Malfoy said smoothly, “for we have terrible news to deliver to our Lord. Take us to him. Now.”

Snape had to admire the slightly mocking intonation on the last word, and the way that Malfoy’s command effectively placed Dolohov in the role of escort rather than jailer. Dolohov seemed to be aware of his sudden status change as well. His face twisted into a scowl of displeasure, gaze jumping between Snape and Malfoy before he grudgingly turned and shoved his way through the crowd. Once they realized where the three men were headed, people seemed only too happy to part for them. Dolohov passed through the hall and down a set of stairs that led to Bellatrix’s laboratory.

Snape had been subjected to the dubious pleasure of touring the madwoman’s sanctum on one or two occasions. She might never have desired him sexually, but she had a healthy respect for him as a fellow practitioner of the Dark Arts. The feeling was not mutual.

The silence of the lab below was interrupted by Bellatrix’s sobs and the subdued rustle of Death Eater robes. Voldemort stood in the center of the room surrounded by a small cadre of supporters. These were the interchangeable sycophants who regularly rose and fell in the ranks according to the Dark Lord’s whim. They had left a small but unmistakable bubble of space between themselves and their Lord, as if by that small remove they could protect themselves from his unpredictable wrath.

Only Bellatrix broke the invisible boundary. She’d prostrated herself before him, twitching from the effects of a recent Cruciatus curse. That alone was enough to chill Snape’s blood; he couldn’t recall that the Dark Lord had ever punished her thusly. Her trembling hands reached for the hem of her Lord’s robe, probably to kiss it.

Any fear that Snape might have had that this was not the real Bellatrix was put to rest. Lily would never grovel before her son’s murderer like that, not even as a ruse.

Voldemort hissed and jerked the fabric from Bellatrix’s grasping fingers before turning to glare at the new arrivals. Malfoy’s profile smoothed into regal indifference. Snape applied himself to not thinking about all the things he had done to earn his Lord’s displeasure.

“Lucius. Severus. How kind of you to join us.” Voldemort’s sibilant hiss cut through the tension in the cellar. His potential wrath had found a focus. Bellatrix’s muffled sobs fell silent. “Had you arrived in a more timely fashion, you might have had the opportunity to enjoy the final moments of Mssrs Crabbe and Goyle, and the punishment of this wretch for her mistake.” He kicked at Bellatrix, but she only took it as an opportunity to grasp at his foot and rain penitent kisses on it.

“Please, my Lord,” she supplicated between kisses, “I didn’t realize it was them. I didn’t know.” Snape noticed the gathered Death Eaters casting furtive glances towards the corner of the room, at the same time that he noticed that the copper tang on the air was fresh, rather than the embedded scent of old blood layered over old blood. Malfoy stiffened almost imperceptibly. Snape’s gaze lifted from Bellatrix’s pathetic cringing to where Malfoy and the others were looking.

The two bodies chained to the walls inside Bellatrix’s cage looked at first like they were in shadow. The faces and bare chests appeared dark and strangely striated. But the whites of their eyes gleamed too brightly and too large. That was when Snape realized that he wasn’t looking on skin in shadow, but the dark, meaty red of exposed muscle.

He’d heard that Bellatrix had been working on an improved flensing curse, one that kept the victims alive for longer into the process. From the builds of the two victims, he’d hazard that Crabbe and Goyle had been her first successful test.

It was a sad testimony to the thoroughness of Lily’s vengeance that the results were not the worst carnage Snape had seen that day.

“What do you have to say for yourselves? Is there any reason I should not kill you now?”

It took Snape a moment to realize that Voldemort was addressing Malfoy and himself, and not Bellatrix. It boded ill for how their news would be taken. He’d seen Voldemort kill the messenger on more than one occasion.

“Forgive us my Lord,” Malfoy offered, to Snape’s surprise. “We were dealing with another matter of great concern. Rabastan and Rodolphus are also dead.”

“What?” Voldemort visibly jerked. The gathered supporters flinched away from him. Only Bellatrix, still huddled at her Lord’s feet, seemed oddly unfazed by the news.

Malfoy stepped slightly forward, and Snape waited for the other man to sell him out, “I’m afraid it is true, my Lord. We arrived in Rodolphus’ last moments. Rabastan was already gone. There was nothing we could do to save either of them.” Snape controlled his start of surprise, wondering what game Malfoy was playing. Hiding the news of Snape’s mercy killing was deadly dangerous when Voldemort was in this sort of mood.

“And did you at least learn anything about who is killing my Death Eaters, or were you as useless as you’ve been all day?”

“Bellatrix,” Malfoy said, with perhaps the barest hint of a smile, and suddenly Snape understood. This was Malfoy’s one chance to take down his sister-in-law. Bellatrix, who was already implicated and under suspicion. Bellatrix, whose loyalty could be neither bought nor bartered. Bellatrix, who Malfoy blamed for her part in the deaths of his son and wife. “No one else could have done it. And I saw her in Rudolphus’ own memory.”

“No!” Bellatrix finally roused enough from her self-abasement to protest the accusation. Voldemort kicked her again.

“Is this true?” His baleful red glare bored into them, and Snape felt an alien mind, oddly reptilian, brush against his own. He concentrated on Rodolphus’ final moments, letting Voldemort see them for himself.

“My Lord,” Snape confirmed carefully. “I witnessed the same memories.”

“No! I would not.” Bellatrix rose to her feet, her stance vaguely feral, her hands curved into claws. Her breath came heavily. “I live only to serve you, my Lord. This is a trap, a trick.”

Snape forced his mind away from thoughts of Lily, and his own actions, and his conviction that a certain Gryffindor revenant had somehow managed to implicate Bellatrix in so many deaths. He needn’t have worried, he realized as the pressure on his mind receded and Voldemort turned his probing gaze on Malfoy. The Dark Lord was willing to be convinced of Bellatrix’s guilt.

“It is too late to protest, Bella,” Voldemort said softly, breaking eyes with Malfoy to level a cold glare on the wild-eyed woman. “I have seen the truth through the eyes of the dead and the words of the dying. You have overestimated my patience for your games.”

“No games, my Lord. Never with you. I am your most devoted servant.”

“Yes, you have made sure of that by murdering your competition. Your service leaves something to be desired, my dear.”

“I love you, my Lord.” She threw herself again at his feet. He seemed to soften, but Snape knew it for an act.

“Do you, Bella?” Voldemort cupped her cheek with one long-fingered hand.

“Yes.” Bellatrix turned to kiss his palm. “I would never betray you. I would do anything for you.”

“Would you?”

“Yes!”

“Would you die for me?”

For a moment, Bellatrix seemed completely lucid. Her eyes widened as she realized the trap in her Lord’s words—realized he was about to repay her unswerving loyalty with betrayal. Then her face collapsed in despair. Her head shook and her mouth worked as she tried to deny this betrayal.

“Wrong answer, my dear Bella.” Voldemort leveled his wand at her, “ _Avada Kedavra_.”

At the flash of green fire, Bellatrix Lestrange collapsed to the floor.

Voldemort regarded her body for a moment, his reptilian features unreadable. “If only all business could be so cleanly resolved. But we have other matters to attend to this night, my Death Eaters.” He stepped past the body and swept a glance over the gathering of shocked supporters. “We are lacking only Pettigrew. Find him. Or better yet,” he raised a hand before anyone could think to move, “I will.”

 

***

 

“Lily?” Pettigrew blinked rapidly. It was vaguely comical, as was his slack-jawed surprise. She cocked her head, unsure how to respond. Lily. She hardly felt like that woman anymore.

“Is it so hard to believe, Peter?” She was genuinely curious. Perhaps she only thought she was who she claimed. Perhaps she really was just a memory. “Do I look so different?”

“It’s been seventeen years.” He shook his head. She could sense his struggle to resolve the strangeness of her presence with the banality of their conversation. Just two friends, running into each other after a long absence.

“It feels like just the other day for me.” The hardness in her tone was a reminder that however it might seem, there was nothing casual or friendly about this meeting. Whether she was Lily or not, she knew why she was here. Pettigrew’s eyes darted up the walls on either side of him, perhaps only just realizing that he was trapped.

“You… this… this isn’t possible,” he sputtered, seeking escape through denial. She shook her head.

“Of course not. Even magic has its limits. Perhaps I’m no more than a figment of your imagination or your guilty conscience.” She paused. “But no. You would have to feel guilt for that to be true.”

Peter stumbled back a step and she took three forward, closing the distance between them. From a window ledge above her, the crow cawed. The gaping abyss roared in her head, devouring the remnants of self that might have recoiled from what she was about to do. She was nothing but vengeance.

She grabbed the back of his neck and forced his face up to the meager yellow light of the street behind her. It glinted off black pupils wide with fear. She felt a ripple of flesh underneath her hand, and she tightened her grip.

“Oh, yes, Peter. Change. Remind me of what a traitorous piece of vermin you are. Let me know the satisfaction of ripping off each of your tiny rat limbs.”

“You’re the one who killed Nott and Avery,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she whispered back. He made another feeble attempt to struggle free, but she bore him to his knees, bending over him.

“Who are you?” he sobbed. “You can’t be her. Who are you, truly? You owe me that at least.”

She owed him nothing. She did not wish to step away from the cold, dark abyss that made the killing so easy. She did not want to return to that other place where she remembered who she was and felt horror at what she was doing. Who was she? She barely knew. She let the pain and horror flood her, and she remembered.

“The first time we met was the night of our Sorting.” She could see it. She’d been so happy, so terrified. She’d been separated from her only friend at Hogwarts. The memory hurt almost too much to speak around. Her life felt comprised of ‘if only’s’.

“You saw me saying goodnight to Severus, saw me hug him. You were so quick to tell James and Sirius. You wanted so much for them to like you, and you sensed already how much they hated Severus. You told everyone. You told them I was a spy for Slytherin.” She laughed at this, at the irony. The childhood trauma seemed so insignificant next to the loss of her friends—all of them.

“It was months before anyone in Gryffindor would make friends with me. I forgave you, eventually, for James’ sake.” Her eyes narrowed. She brought her other hand up, and tightened them around his throat. “I shouldn’t ever have done so.”

Pettigrew’s eyes had widened with her recitation. Now, they bugged from lack of oxygen and the realization of what she meant to do.

“Tell me you’re sorry, Peter,” she said to his reddening face. His mouth gaped open, struggling for breath. His hands, one silver and one flesh, scrabbled at hers. He clawed great gouges in her forearms that healed almost instantly. She could feel the frantic flutter of a pulse beneath her palms. The abyss roared at the back of her mind, but she didn’t succumb. This death, she wanted to feel. She squeezed harder.

His face turned a sickly grayish-purple. Little red dots bloomed in the whites of his eyes and the skin around them. Veins stood out on his neck and temples, ropy and grotesque in the yellow light. His eyes rolled back into his head and his hands flopped uselessly at his sides. The silver grated against the pavement.

Behind her, the crow gave an agitated cry and launched into the air. She heard the scuffle of shoes and the soft rustle of robes, sensed the presence of a silent audience. She gave the limp body one more jerking squeeze before releasing her grip to let it slump among the refuse. She felt… hollow. She’d just killed a man, a former friend, and she felt nothing. There was nothing there to feel. Unwilling to face what that meant, she sought refuge again in the abyss.

Straightening, she turned to face the recent arrival.

“Thank you for not interrupting.”

The figure before her shrugged one shoulder in a gracefully sinuous motion, as if it was of no matter to him. The barely contained fury in his red-slitted eyes belied the movement.

“Hello, Tom,” she said, ignoring the crowd of followers that surrounded him. He was all that mattered at the moment. The abyss inside her cried out for him, a hungry wail from the center of her being.

“Hello, Lily,” Lord Voldemort said. “What brings you here?”

 

***

 

Snape had expected Voldemort to Disapparate. It seemed everyone else had as well. When their Lord started forward, striding up the stairs, all the gathered Death Eaters stood motionless in astonishment. A moment later, they were all rushing to follow. Snape and Malfoy were the first to reach the stairs.

Voldemort’s trail took them out to the street and around the side of the house. Snape spied two forms in the shadows of the narrow passage. One of the forms was limp in the grasp of the other. A dark, fluttering shape launched itself skyward, and Snape realized with dread who one of the shapes must belong to. A flash of silver in the streetlight gave a good indication as to who the other one was.

Voldemort waited. He waited until his most sycophantic follower was a boneless heap amongst the trash and filth. He waited until Malfoy and Snape and the others eddied around him. His stillness bespoke a fury deeper than Snape had ever seen.

The murderer ahead turned to face them. Her black dress blended with the shadows, but her hair glowed a violent, malevolent red. Even her green eyes seemed feral in the dim yellow light. Her slender fingers flexed, as if she could still feel the life she’d choked out of Pettigrew.

Snape noticed more than one person amongst the followers flinching at that. To a wizard, killing without a wand was obscene… barbaric. A monster, she had called herself, and against his will he began to believe it. He wondered if he should question his own sanity, to ally himself with such a creature. Yet he knew he had no choice. She was Lily, and he was hers. Always.

“Thank you for not interrupting.” Her voice was light, conversational. Snape willed her to keep silent, knowing that Voldemort would not be placated. Under his usual blank façade, Snape’s mind raced. He could see no way that this could end in anything but Lily’s death.

He should never have brought her here this night.

“Hello, Tom,” she said, making matters even worse. No one dared to refer to the Dark Lord by his chosen name, nevermind the name of his birth.

“Hello, Lily.” Lord Voldemort’s tone was equally soft. It didn’t make it any less menacing.

Snape edged towards the wall, peripheral to any line of fire, but still accessible to both adversaries should he need to act. Malfoy shifted in the same direction, though Snape suspected it was for reasons of self-preservation.

“What brings you here?” The Dark Lord asked, as if it weren’t obvious.

“Vengeance,” Lily answered, motioning towards Pettigrew’s body. She shifted her arc so that the motion encompassed Voldemort and his followers, “and unfinished business, of course. What else drives a ghost from her grave?”

“You are no ghost,” Voldemort said, his glance flicking towards the corpse on the ground.

“I am as much a ghost as you are.”

“And you are the one who has been slaughtering my Death Eaters?”

“Not just me. Nott and Avery, and now Peter, of course. But Bellatrix took care of Crabbe and Goyle herself, and technically the Lestrange men killed each other.”

“How.” The question was rough and low. Voldemort’s thin control was slipping.

“Polyjuice. I imagine you’ve already meted out punishment? Your poor Bella. She must have felt so betrayed, there at the end.”

Voldemort’s temper snapped. Knowing what was to come, Snape lunged forward. His instinct was to somehow intervene, even if it was foolishly impossible, even if it would result in his death. Malfoy sidestepped in front of him, impeding his action, but also blocking it from anyone else’s notice.

With a growl of rising fury, Voldemort raised his wand and slashed it at Lily.

“ _AVADA KEDAVRA!_ ”

The alley was lit by a flash of sickly green light. The afterimage of a dozen gloating faces burned into Snape’s vision, along with Malfoy’s enigmatic glare, Voldemort’s twisted scowl, and Lily’s serene smile. Snape fought not to collapse to the ground at losing her again. He was unaccountably assisted by Malfoy’s supporting hand under his elbow.

A sound penetrated Snape’s shock. The smug grins of the other Death Eaters faded. It was laughter—a light, feminine laugh.

“You aren’t very bright, are you Tom? I said I was as much a ghost as you… or did you think I was being poetic?”

Lily stood in the middle of the alley, unharmed, smiling as though she hadn’t a care in the world. Even in his rush of relief, Snape was unnerved. There was something inhuman about her eyes. They were the same green as the killing curse. She took a step forward, and all of the Death Eaters shifted back. Only Voldemort held his ground.

“Impossible,” Voldemort whispered.

“Not particularly. Not even the first time it has happened to you, is it? I understand Harry also survived your killing curse.” She took another step forward. Voldemort rallied his fury.

“ _Sectumsempra_.”

Snape flinched. Long, vicious slashes rent the bodice of Lily’s dress and the pale skin underneath. Voldemort’s sneer of satisfaction was short-lived. Before everyone’s eyes, the cuts began to knit themselves closed. Snape had never seen such magic. Not even the Dark Lord could heal so quickly.

Voldemort seemed to realize that Lily was now as untouchable as he.

“Soul magic,” he bit out. “Someone has been making Horcruxes. I’m surprised the Order would stoop to such things. Have the heroes finally succumbed to the Dark? How brave. How valiant. How hypocritical.”

“As usual, Tom, you are blind to any perspective but your own.” Lily had taken several more steps forward. Less than a foot separated her from the Dark Lord.

“You have a weakness,” he said softly. “You must. Whatever it is, I will find it.”

“As I have found yours.”

Snape tensed, exchanging a surprised glance with Malfoy—surprised, because he saw in Malfoy’s eyes the same desperate hope that surged through him. Had Lily somehow prized the secret of the final Horcrux from one of her victims?

Voldemort shook his head, as if by denying Lily’s words he would deny the possibility that they were true. “Bravado. If you though you could kill me, then why haven’t you done so?”

“Because, Tom, it isn’t your time yet. You still have one more day. October 31st, remember?" She winked and smiled. "Now I’m being poetic.”

Voldemort’s serpentine features twisted in rage again. He pressed his wand to her chest. “ _Crucio!_ ”

Lily stood unmoved. “Pain? Oh, Tom. Nothing you could wish on me is worse than what I already suffer. My son, my husband, all my friends dead and gone. I’ve lost everything that meant anything to me.”

Snape couldn’t quite fight back the surge of pain that those words sent through him. He knew he’d stopped meaning anything to her long ago, that she meant to kill him, but still it hurt.

Lily took the final step towards Voldemort. They stood chest to chest. The Dark Lord towered over her, yet somehow she seemed the larger. He quailed before her. She stood on tiptoe and whispered in a voice that carried through the silence.

“I’m just here to return the favor.”

She sank back to her heels, still gazing up into his face. She must have been satisfied with what she saw there. She smiled that gentle, motherly smile and glided past Voldemort, towards the mouth of the alley. Death Eaters parted before her, terror on every face. She reached the mouth of the alley and disappeared into the night.

“Leave me.” Voldemort’s voice was chill and soft.

The alley echoed with loud pops as Death Eaters fled, anxious to leave before their Lord took his wrath out on them. With one last unreadable glance at Snape, Malfoy Disapparated as well. Snape hesitated, but knew he could not follow Lily into the night. He would have to wait and hope she returned to Grimmauld Place. With a swish of his wand, he left Voldemort standing alone in the dark.


	10. Believe in Angels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all. Sorry for the ridiculously long delay. Life happened. But I'm back now and should have the rest of this revised and up by the end of the week.

It was an exhausted and disheartened Severus Snape who cracked into existence on the darkened corner of Grimmauld Place. The streetlamp had flickered its last, unsteady light months previous, and the Muggle authorities hadn’t seen fit to fix it yet. Blind bureaucratic ineptitude, it seemed, was far more effective than a put-outer.

“Who needs magic?” Snape mused grimly, recalling the horror of Lily choking the life out of Pettigrew.

She had survived the killing curse. She had shrugged off Voldemort’s Crucio and healed immediately from the pernicious wounds of Sectumsempra. Snape knew she was wandless, was killing her victims in much more inventive and personal ways than could be attributed to magic, but somehow he had convinced himself that she was still the witch he had known. He had denied her claims of being a monster because they seemed impossible.

Now he knew differently.

He’d watched her face off against Voldemort, watched her toy with the Dark Lord and take enjoyment from it. Snape hardly knew her, with her ghastly white face and her darkened eyes and lips. Lily had become a killer of killers, and she terrified him.

Shoulders hunched, steps dragging, he trudged up to the landing of 12 Grimmauld Place. The windows were dark; Lily hadn’t returned. Perhaps she’d gone off to kill Malfoy. Snape found himself hoping she hadn’t. Lucius was as tarred black as any of Voldemort’s supporters, including Snape himself, but Malfoy was... no, not friend. A fellow prisoner of circumstance. And Lucius had blocked Snape from leaping to Lily’s defense, for reasons that were still entirely unclear.

Once, Snape would have considered that a debt to repay in kind, but Snape had stopped keeping a ledger of who owed whom some time ago. It was the highest compliment a Slytherin could pay another of their house.

He sagged, shutting the door with his weight, and shook his head at the futility of such ruminations. He couldn’t do anything for Lucius. They were dead men, all of them. If Snape held any illusions that he might be spared from Lily’s vengeance, they shattered in the alley.

Snape pulled himself up and was moving towards the stairway and another sleepless dawn when he noticed Walburga Black’s portrait gesticulating wildly. The scowl on her face was the only indication of her screams of rage. Someone had placed a modified bubble-head jinx on the portrait. What was the line from that old muggle horror movie? In space, no-one can hear you scream?

He barely had time to lift his wand before he was struck with a half-dozen curses and jinxes.

“ _Expelliarmus!_ ”

“ _Stupefy!_ ”

“ _Langlock!_ ” “ _Petrificus Totalus!_ ” “ _Incarcerous!"_

The world went black. Snape went with it.

* * *

Hermione Granger had been forced to grow up more than she ever imagined in the past six months. Somehow, despite all the dangers and threats she’d suffered during her school years, Dumbledore and the Order managed to keep her and her friends sheltered in a safe, protected bubble. They’d never been subjected to the worst atrocities perpetrated by Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Oh, they knew about the disappearances, the covered-up attacks on Muggles, Alice and Frank Longbottom lying in clean hospital beds in St. Mungo’s, but neither she nor Harry nor Ron ever really considered the reality of what these things represented. They had been so naïve.

The bubble burst with Harry’s death. The chosen one had failed, the bad guy had won. Suddenly life was nothing like the movies or books she was raised to believe as true. Friends died, and you didn’t have time to mourn them. Classroom hand-waving impressed no-one on a battlefield. Knowing the right answers wouldn’t necessarily save you, but not knowing them could get you killed. People weren’t brave or righteous, they were just trying to survive, even if it meant looking the other way from what was being done to their neighbors and former friends.

Most days, Hermione didn’t blame them. She didn’t have the energy for blame. She had given up the wonder of magic to concentrate on the mechanics of survival. Spells were learned because they were useful, potions brewed because they were needed. Even targets – no, _peopl_ e – were warned or saved or sacrificed depending on their tactical value. It wasn’t a life she would ever have chosen, could never even have imagined. How could she blame others when, more and more these days, she found herself wishing she had the luxury of choosing to keep her hand and head down, of going unnoticed.

Hermione still used magic, but she had stopped believing in Magic.

When Avery caught her, she resigned herself to a painful and humiliating death. She resolved to end it before Avery delivered her to Voldemort. It was the only hope she had at that point.

And then the impossible happened. She was saved by a dark, avenging angel… by Lily Potter. It was almost enough to make Hermione believe in Magic again.

After her return to the safehouse and the first moments of relieved jubilation, she told the remnants of the Order what had happened. They were more than a bit skeptical. Tonks dismissed it as stress-induced hallucination. Remus suggested it might be a Death Eater trick to track Hermione back to the resistance. Even Shacklebolt was more concerned over what information Hermione had learned about Death Eater locations and Voldemort’s movements.

Then news came of Nott’s demise, and rumors that Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had closed the Leakey Cauldron for unknown reasons, and suddenly everyone gave her claims far more credence.

A plan was formed. If anyone knew what was going on, it would be Snape. They'd been tracking his comings and goings at Grimmauld Place for months, ready to use him or destroy him if the time seemed right. The instability caused by the deaths of two of Voldemort's greatest supporters was better than anything to date, and the Order couldn't survive much longer in the drawn out conflict. They moved.

Standing over Snape's unconscious body in the bare room they used for interrogations, Hermione found she couldn’t hate him. She was too drained to muster that level of emotion. Shell-shock, she imagined some muggle psychologist would diagnose. She didn’t care what it was, she just wanted it to go away. She just wanted the war to be over.

 _Please_ , she begged—prayed—to whatever power cared to listen. _Please pretend to be on our side just one more time._

Remus bent over Snape and cracked a vial of vaporized Pepper-Up potion under his nose. Several other, darker potions rattled at Remus's side. Hermione had developed them herself for use in interrogation. They would get the job done. She hoped. This was the first time they were being used against a trained Legilimens. Her hands twisted nervously in the folds of her robes, imagining the derision in Snape's eyes if the potions failed, then she shook her head to rid herself of the swottish thoughts. Snape wasn't her potions professor anymore. The only grade that mattered was whether or not the damned things worked.

Snape twisted away from Remus's vial; he groaned and cracked an eye, glaring at the assembled Order members. Hermione expected a stream of invective, all snapped consonants and drawled vowels, but Snape said nothing at first. He sat up, ran his tongue over his teeth. His dark eyes fixed on her, unblinking, until she was tempted to fidget from foot to foot like a First Year.

“Miss Granger. So it _was_ you at the Leaky Cauldron.”

“M-me?” she squeaked. Her limbs shook with fine trembles. He couldn’t know... nobody except the people in the safehouse knew, and Avery. And Lily Potter.

And Avery was dead.

“She said there was a girl. I had no notion it might have been you. Until later.”

She. _She._

“I knew it. You did this. You vile pervert,” Remus responded before Hermione could find her voice. It was too close to the full moon, and his temper was always uncertain these days. They didn’t have the time or resources to brew an adequate wolfsbane potion. Remus shoved Snape against the wall, snarling teeth an inch from his beaky nose. “You brought her back. You sick... disgusting... she was at peace and you—”

“Remus, stop.” Tonks caught her husband, dragging him off Snape and holding him. Whatever she whispered into his ear, it calmed the feral rage. He shuddered and turned in her arms. He was the one who’d told them about Snape’s fixation with Lily Potter—what Snape might want with a woman almost two decades dead.

“I’ll take care of this.” Hermione waved Tonks to take Remus out of the room. She shouldn’t have allowed him, but he’d been insistent. Driven, ever since Hermione convinced them that Lily Potter might be alive.

Alive... or some semblance of it.

Tonks handed over the potions belt and drew a shaken Remus from the room. The vials clinked when Hermione set them down on a rickety, three-legged table and drew out one special vial.

“How did you do it?” she asked, picking at the wax stopper.

“I didn’t.”

Hermione stopped picking. “You might as well tell the truth, Professor.” Her voice hitched on the title, but what else could she call him? Headmaster was an unearned farce, Snape went against a lifetime of swottishness, and Severus was far too personal.

Professor it was, then. She resumed picking, removed the wax and stopper. “If you think Occlumency will protect you, you’re mistaken. It won’t.”

Snape sat as straight as he could with his arms bound behind him. “If you think a girl I’ve taught since her first year is enough to intimidate me, then you are mistaken, Miss Granger. You won’t.”

Oh, he was getting shirty with the wrong girl. “Professor, what would you get if you crossed Veritaserum with an Elixer of Euphoria?”

“A foul-tasting soup. The wormwood in the elixir nullifies the dragon’s blood in the Veratiserum.”

There was something infinitely comforting in that dismissive sneer. Hermione crouched before Snape and held up the unstoppered vial. “What if you substituted the porcupine quills in both potions with hedgehog quills?” And something even more satisfying about wiping that sneer away. The synergy from the same ingredient would allow the potions to be mixed. And hedgehogs, by nature both happy and honest, would imbue the resulting potion with those qualities. It was the sort of understanding that any Potions Master should intuit.

Hermione waited for Snape’s disdainful scowl to crack, for his eyes to widen and his breath to catch in realization. She clamped her hand around his nose and forced several drops of the potion down his throat. “You’re going to tell me the truth, Professor. And you’re going to enjoy doing it.”

It only took a moment for the potion to take effect. Snape didn’t smile like the other people she’d questioned under it—Hermione wasn’t certain he _could_ smile—but his scowl softened, and she no longer felt like he was trying to wandlessly transfigure her into a mouse with glares alone.

She’d had the idea for the potion whilst reading about interrogation tactics in military prisons. It turned out that cliché wisdom was true—you could win more flies with honey.

“How did you bring Lily Potter back from the dead?” Hermione asked.

“I didn’t.”

“Who did? Voldemort?”

Snape hesitated over his answer, and Hermione forced herself to take a breath and start again. Every potion had limits, and ambiguity was this one’s. It required a slow build, each minor truth giving the imbiber a surge of satisfaction that coaxed them to volunteer further truths. Like a lab rat hitting a button for a treat.

“What is your name?”

“Severus Snape P-prince.” Snape’s teeth snapped around the end of the name, as though he could catch it as it came out. He focused on a point beyond Hermione’s head. His fingers tapped a steady rhythm on the floorboards. All classic signs of a Occlumens trying to dodge the effects of Veritaserum. All useless against Hermione’s improved version.

Hermione’s knees ached. She sat cross-legged before Snape. This would take a while. “Where do you live?”

“Twelve Grimmauld Place.”

“And before that?”

“H-hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.” Snape closed his eyes. A fine tremble washing over him. To a man rarely used to experiencing happiness, the potion must be doubly potent.

“And what did you do there?”

Another shiver. Snape’s mouth opened and closed, showing yellow teeth. His nostrils flared, black eyes snapping open to glare at her over his beaked nose. He was fighting it, and it occurred to Hermione that if anyone could find a way around the potion, it would be a miserable git like him. She put a hand on his knee. Touch was another interrogation technique she’d read about. Pushing boundaries. Establishing a connection. She wasn’t his friend, but she could be an ally. “It’s okay, Professor. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

His head sagged, breath huffing out in a dusty, disused laugh. “So you think, Miss Granger. What was it you asked? What did I do at Hogwarts? Hmm. Wherever should I start?”

Hermione nodded. Patted his knee. He was falling into the potion now, feeling the pleasure that came with honesty. “Wherever you want, Professor.”

Another dry laugh that was hardly a laugh. “I was a student in House Slytherin. I returned as the Potions Professor and head of House Slytherin. I was the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor. I was the Headmaster.” He lifted his head, once again catching her gaze, and she couldn’t look away. “I was Lily Evans’ friend. I was James Potter’s nemesis. I overheard Sybil’s prophecy and revealed it to the Dark Lord. I went to Albus and begged him to save Lily. I spied for Albus. I pretended to spy for the Dark Lord. I protected Harry Potter. I helped Albus track down the Horcruxes. I killed Albus on his orders. I spent another year working against the Dark Lord so that Harry Potter could kill him. I watched Harry Potter fail and die. I left Hogwarts.”

Hermine was the one trembling now. “Wh-what?”

Snape smiled. Not a nice smile, but definitely one filled with satisfaction. “Now, Miss Granger. While I’m still under this ingenious little amalgam of yours, would you like me to tell you how I have continued to work against the Dark Lord in secret, or should I concentrate on how I had nothing to do with Lily Potter’s return from the grave?”

***

Lucius Malfoy was waiting for Lily when she entered the salon. A cowed house elf showed her the way. Malfoy sat at a tea table next to a set of French doors open to the chilly night, feeding gobbets of raw, bloody meat to her crow. The crow looked up when Lily entered, its eyes reflecting as black as the bloody meat reflected red. It took a moment to snap down the last dangling gobbet before cawing and hopping up to an empty owl perch beside the table, docile as a dove.

Malfoy took a moment to clean his fingers on a serviette before setting that and the bowl of meat aside and lifting a goblet of wine as red as the bloody meat. He gestured with the glass for Lily to take the empty seat across from him.

“I know what you are,” he said.

Lily flinched. The crow cawed and ruffled its feathers.

“I know why you’ve come here,” Malfoy continued.

In this, at least, Lily was on firm ground. Malfoy thought she meant to kill him—and she did—but more important concerns had suspended that goal. “I’ve come for Severus.”

Malfoy sipped his wine, savoring it before answering. “He isn’t here.”

She had no time and less patience for this. She planted her fists on the tea table, rattling the glassware and bowl. Her crow hopped and squawked in protest. “He was taken from Grimmauld Place. Voldemort—”

“Did not inform me if that was his plan. And I have every reason to believe it was not.” Malfoy breathed deeply of his wine as though death didn’t loom over him. “Sit. Please. Don’t be tiresome.”

He could give lessons in the subject. Even so, she couldn’t kill him yet. He had something she wanted. And nothing she touched in this place was giving her memories. The crow cawed softly again from his perch. Subdued. It frightened her. “What reason is that?”

“You don’t need to worry that Severus will betray you, even if he wanted to. He was raised by a Muggle. They have no name for what you are. Even most Pureblood families will have forgotten.”

“But you know.” Malfoy was a snake. She shouldn’t listen. She should find out what he knew about Severus, kill him, and take her crow out of here.

She sat. Took a hunk of meat from the glistening bowl. Blood coated her fingers like a candy glaze. She fed the meat to the crow.

“Quite,” Malfoy said. “You are a revenant. And this is your guide. They say the magic to create Horcruxes was a corruption of the primal magic that connects the two of you. Kill the crow, and you become mortal.”

Lily covered her crow with a protective hand. “And perhaps I will break your neck before you can do that.”

Malfoy slipped something out of his robes. A crystal bottle with a silver cap, half full of a dark liquid. “And perhaps I poured a measure of this hemlock into the meat before you arrived.”

Lily’s fingers stilled on the sleek feathers. The crow cooed. Was it docile from her touch, or from the first effects of Malfoy’s poison? She forced calm into her tone. “That won’t stop me from killing you. The only one who profits from stopping me now is Voldemort.”

“Yes.” Malfoy tapped the cap once, twice, thrice more, before setting it aside. “You may rest easy. I did nothing to the meat. Will you? Kill him? _Can_ you kill him?”

She could make no sense of Malfoy’s shifts of topic, not without the memories to guide her. Lily wished then for Severus’ advice. Her other crow. If he died, would she become mortal? “I cannot rest until he is gone.” She hesitated to say more, but if Malfoy knew what she was, he must know what drove her. “Until you are all gone.”

Malfoy took a slow sip of his wine. “Of course. All of us. That would make sense for what you are.”

“And what am I?”

“Magic. Old—no, _ancient_ magic. From a time when there were only primal emotions—love, hate, jealousy, greed, vengeance, mercy—and those enlightened few with the will to harness them. The pure ones. The first of us.”

The words sounded familiar. Old Professor Slughorn had delighted in talking about what separated people like them from Muggles. “Wizards.”

Malfoy nodded and set his wineglass aside. “You’re no stranger to such magic. Love protected your son. Vengeance – and perhaps Justice – has brought you back. Such emotions, channeled with will, are far more powerful than any killing curse cast by a wand. Possibly there’s no greater power in the world.”

Lily shook her head, once, sharply. Her crow cawed with the vehemence of her rejection. “Love is the greatest—”

“Clearly not,” Malfoy snapped. “Though it’s a nice enough fairy tale to placate the Muggleborn and their ilk. But you know better. This magic in you is Dark and Light in equal measure.”

And that, she could not deny. Lily looked away from Malfoy’s silver-glint gaze, like avoiding a mirror that showed her truths she didn’t wish to acknowledge. And yet, she was beginning to understand some truths about him as well. Severus had given her the key to decode him. Pureblood pride, a family line decimated, and a mad, half-blood Lord was the cause.

And Malfoy hadn’t poisoned her crow when he could have.

“I can kill him. Voldemort,” she said, and had the satisfaction of seeing Malfoy’s lips curve into a cruel smile. “But I need Severus.”

“Of course you do. As you said, your vengeance must be complete or you will never rest.” Malfoy drained the rest of his wine, smiling as though he’d relayed some great joke. “Wouldn’t do to let someone else end the matter for you.”

Lily bit down on a protest. He was right. And yet she was overcome by the same protective urge that made her want to send her crow far away from Malfoy. Severus was hers. Hers to destroy.

Perhaps hers to spare?

The crow hopped away, out the French doors and onto the terrace. It was pulling her to be gone, but she had business to finish. She stood, bloody fingers flexing as though they were still locked around Peter’s neck. “If you can’t help me...”

“Yes, yes. Then there’s no reason to keep me alive. Very well. Consider that Severus has more enemies among your friends than he does among ours. Seek out the Order. I’m certain they’ll be delighted to know their hero is a murderous revenant.”

The Order. Lily thought back to the girl she’d saved from Avery. The one who’d known Harry. Who’d loved him and mourned him. She could find that girl. The crow could find her.

“Thank you. And now—”

“And now you can leave me be.” Malfoy waved his hand, shooing her out the doors after her crow. “I promise, I’ll be nothing for you to worry about soon enough. Or did you think I brought this out for show?” He lifted the crystal bottle and tapped it against the empty wineglass. A filmy residue streaked the sides. Lily frowned. Hemlock. She’d always been aces at potions.

“You’re robbing me of my vengeance.”

Malfoy’s laugh ended in a wheeze. He listed to one side, jerked upright again, the picture of Pureblood pride. “You could see it like that. I would counter that I would not have imbibed this poison if not for you. The effect is the same.”

“Then why poison yourself?”

“Because I will not see the Malfoy line die at the hands of a _Mudblood_ ,” he spat. For a moment, the hatred in his eyes was as pure as the vengeance in her soul. He shuttered it away and ran a finger around the rim of his empty wineglass, rolling the residue between his fingers. “Not your hands. Not _his_.”

“How do I know this isn’t some trick?” Lily asked. “That you don’t have a bezoar or some other antidote that you’ll use once I’ve left?”

Malfoy looked up at her with black-shot eyes. The silver mirrors were gone. There was only the emptiness of a man who’d lost everything. “Because I know that you will know if I don’t die. You will return. And I believe your second visit would not be so cordial.”

Lily tilted her head in acknowledgment. It was no less than true.

Dipping her finger in the meat bowl, Lily traced the outline of a crow on the white tablecloth.

“Such a mess,” Malfoy murmured. His breath came shallow and uneven. “The elves will never get it out.”

Lily stopped in the doorway, turned to watch him. He was already slumping forward, his usually perfect posture bent in death’s defeat.

“Mr. Malfoy. I am sorry about your son,” she said.

Malfoy’s silver hair slid forward; he lifted his head in a weak nod. “And I am sorry about yours.”

Lily shut the door on his fading breathing.


End file.
